Suriname: Pork and shrimp pepper pot

Suriname sure sounds like one of those obscure places where an interesting meal could be hard to come by. At least that's what I thought. Talk about a misjudgment. The dish I served up from this South American country is probably one of my favorites since I started cooking my away around the world. Who knew!

Like every other kitchen voyage, I pulled Suriname out of the wine bag and then started with some research and planning. I learned that its location in the northeastern part of South America has given it both Latin and Caribbean influences. Its culture and food has also been inspired by the various and eclectic mix of cultures that colonized it over the years, including French, Dutch, Indian and Indonesian. In some U.S. cities - namely NY - Surinamese cuisine appears to be popular enough to sustain entire restaurants.

Now I see why. Some of the popular foods are similar to Indian dishes - curries, chutneys and flat breads. I found recipes that seemed to be the Surinamese take on chicken and rice or pork and beans. Even Emeril has a recipe for a Surinamese vatapa, a shrimp and fish stew.

As tempting as any Emeril recipe is, I opted instead for a pepper pot, a meat and vegetable stew spiced with habanero peppers. I found this recipe on the Food Network web site and made a few alterations, namely using pork instead of chicken. My Publix was out of okra so I threw in a few brussels sprouts (don't ask me why ... I always thought the two veggies tasted kind of similar). And I seasoned the meat with the Badia Sazon Tropical spice blend that I picked up at the SoBe food festival.

The result was a thick and flavorful stew with layers of complex, yet complimenting flavors. The sweet potatoes end up melting into the broth, making for a creamy backdrop to the meats and kale, and balancing the kick of the habanero pepper! This one was a huge winner.

Oven Baked Chilean Sea Bass

Since I didn't make it (yet) this doesn't count as Chile for the blog, but this dish from the Publix Chilean food and wine demo was sooooo spectacular I had to share it. The tomato onion mix melds nicely with the cream sauce, wrapping the meaty Chilean sea bass in yumminess. It's kind of like a fish wrapped up in lasagna. Delish! They served it with a cabernet sauvignon from Castillo de Molina.

What you need:

4 1/2 pounds Sea bass or grouper, scaled with skin on

1 large yellow onion, chopped

1/2 cup whipping cream

1/2 cup butter

2 tbsps. vegetable oil

1 tbsp. tomato paste

1 tbsp. flour

1 cup whole milk

2 tsps. paprika

1 cup Parmesan cheese, grated

2 tsps. dill, dried

What to do:

Season both sides of the fish with salt, pepper, dill and let sit at least two hours.

Pre-heat the oven to 350.

Heat two tablespoons of butter and oil in a pan and saute the onions until brown. Add the paprika and tomato paste.

In a separate pan, heat two tablespoons of butter and brown the flour in it. Slowly add the milk, stirring constantly until smooth. Slowly add the cream, simmer and season with salt and pepper.

Butter a baking dish large enough to hold the fish. Cover the bottom with half of the sauteed onion mix, place the fish on top and cover with the rest of the onions. Pour cream sauce over top and sprinkle with cheese.

Place in oven for 10 minutes to cook. Insert a knife to check doneness.

Serve with sauteed potatoes.

La vida lenta

The debate on whether to purchase a ticket for the Chilean food and wine demo started out like so many others: Is it really worth spending $45.

As the week went on, work took a toll on my energy, the weather turned crappy and my friends all decided they couldn't make it. By the time Friday rolled around, all I wanted to do was curl up on the couch in my comphies with some nice vino. There were so many reasons to just not go. Was it too late to get a refund?

But when the woman from Castillo de Molina vineyards stepped to the front of the Apron's Cooking School classroom and started speaking, I knew I ended up there for a reason. If nothing else, this evening was meant to renew my perspective on living.

"You all probably heard that in my home today there was an earthquake," Carolina Rivera started, referring to the 7.2 magnitude aftershock that hit Chile that morning.

As she continued, she didn't dwell on mass destruction, death or devastation. She talked something much simpler: wine cellars.

"A lot of people had wine cellars with years worth of wine stored away that got destroyed," she said. "They were all saving it for some special occasion. Now it's gone. They will never be able to enjoy it."

Call me all zen and metaphorical, but her words struck a chord. Her story of the wine cellars may seem superficial, but it's really about something so much more. Something everyone can relate to and learn from.

How many times do we put off doing things we enjoy, let work or a standard of practicality keep us from happiness. Instead, we save our money, make our plans, keep climbing to the top. But where are we really climbing?

And what if something beyond our control - health, natural disaster, an accident - keeps us from ever making it? Maybe it's not making it to the top of the pyramid that matters. Maybe just the fact that we got to climb it at all is what's important.

The story of the wine cellars reminded me of a story I heard in Israel. Our tour guides told us how many people in the country are buried in credit card debt. In a country where terrorist attacks have taken thousands of lives, people live in the moment, even if that means being somewhat indulgent. They may not be around when the bill comes.

Sure, that is probably a little extreme. But the point is to live for the day. On a small scale, enjoy that bottle of wine if you have it. Sign up for that cooking class. Go after that bigger thing you always wanted. You may not always have a chance to do it.

She called it the slow life.

"The slow life is the best life," she said.

That was the start of a lovely two hours where the team of Publix chefs paraded out a four course meal complete with salmon, a Chilean sea bass dish to die for, empanadas, tamales, and merlot poached pear. Of course there were four types of vino. I even made a new local foodie friend.

Chile has become a new fascination for me, largely because I've taken to the rich red wines they produce there. I had started making plans to visit at some point this year, but put them off.

Maybe it's time I reconsider ...

Going Global

So it occurred to me today that some readers might appreciate a quick recap of what countries I finished. Without any further ado... Drum roll please ...

The First Twenty

1. Germany

2. Panama

3. Myanmar

4. Comoros

5. Mali

6. Greece

7. Iran

8. Israel

9. Lebanon

10. Syria

11. Tunisia

12. Dominican Republic

13. Hungary

14. Vietnam

15. Poland

16. Thailand

17. Spain

18. France

19. El Salvador

20. Tajikistan

All of the recipes, of course, are floating around the blog!

A mini milestone

I know. It's not THAT great. But every step forward is a step in the right direction, right?

Tajikistan marked my 20th country, which out of 203 means I more or less reached the 10 percent point.

I know. It's kind of like getting on the elliptic machine, setting the time for an hour and then rejoicing when you get through five minutes. But it's still five minutes, isn't it?

Tajikistan: Plov

The first thought that crossed my mind when I pulled Tajikistan out of the wine bag of fun isn't really appropriate for a family blog. (It definitely started with a "What the" ...)

This definitely ranks pretty high on the list of obscure countries I've tried to cook from, so I figured it was a long shot it would show up on the Wikipedia list of national dishes. But I was wrong. It never ceases to amaze me just how much information is out there on the Internet about cooking and food in other countries.

Turns out the national dish of Tajikistan is Plov, kind of the Tajik version of a paella or jambalaya. They make it for special occasions. I actually found several recipes out there that all had very similar ingredients, so I used that for the foundation for my recipe.

My research also showed that making Tajik Plov is considered more of a masculine endeavor in the central Asian country. Apparently they think women aren't capable of cooking the rice right.

You know what I have to say to that? Again, more inappropriate.

In perhaps a big "I'll show them" to the people of Tajik mindset, mine turned out pretty good. An added benefit: It was super easy. You could throw this together on any weeknight. De-boning the lamb is the biggest time commitment. Another bonus: I had all of the spices, garlic and carrots in my kitchen so my grocery bill for this dish cost less than $20 (for probably a week's worth of dinners). About half of it was a giant thing of arborio rice that I still have a lot of for future recipes.

Here's what I came up with.

What you need:

3 lbs. lamb cubed

3 tbsp. olive oil

2 yellow onions, sliced

3 cups carrots cut into chunks

5 gloves garlic, minced

3 tsp. coriander

2 tsp. cumin

3 tsp. crushed red pepper

3 cups dry arborio rice

1 bunch curly parsley, chopped

water

salt, fresh ground pepper to taste

What to do:

Heat the oil in a pot and when hot add the cubed lamb. Cook until browned. Add the sliced onions, carrots and garlic and let them cook in the juices of the lamb for about 5 minutes. Add the coriander, cumin, crushed red pepper and some salt and pepper and combine. Let cook another 5 minutes.

Add the dry arborio rice to the mixture and cover with water. Cook for about 30 minutes until the rice is tender, gradually adding more water as the rice absorbs it. When the rice is almost done, add more salt and pepper to taste and the parsley.

A little repacking ...

It happens to all of us. Especially during those really long trips. We start collecting things. Lots of things, many of which we don't need. Our suitcase gets full and we can't fit in the things we really need for our journey.

I'm a little bit of a neat freak. Clutter gets to me. I like order.

So I was starting to feel a little bit like this blog was getting too far off track. Anyone coming to it to find international recipes had to sort through all of my other random food musings.

I figured the best way to solve the problem was to make a new home for all of those non-global food postings. It's called Foodie in Florida.

You may notice a lot of the older posts on this blog are gone. I transferred them over to the new one so this space could be exclusively for my global culinary adventures. I'll just be updating this one now with stories and recipes from around the world. Everything else you can find on the new blog. I'll post a note on Foodie in Florida when I update this one. Hopefully you will visit them both! And I'm actually starting to hatch plans for a third blog in the near future ... Stay tuned!

So now that we've cleaned things out a bit, let's get back on the road again.

El Salvador: Pupusa

What the hell is a pupusa, anyway? And why bother?

That might as well be the title of this post, since that's exactly what I was thinking by the time I was done with the pupusa-making process.

I'll start by saying I've never been to El Salvador, or anywhere remotely close to it for that matter. The country has no sentimental value. I've never even thought much about it. Never seen a pupusa on a restaurant menu.

But at some point last Monday, my week was off to a rough start. I was totally unmotivated. Totally disinterested in most of the things I needed to get done at work. And it was cold and crappy out. Who even wants to get out of bed in that weather? I mean, come on. This is Florida! I'm here for a reason.

I dragged through the first few days of the week, starting to feel a little bummed. I wished I had some sort of distraction. Something to get me excited and pull me out of my funk.

Then I remembered the wine bag of fun. The occasional monotony of life was part of the reason I started this blog in the first place. Just something to spice things up when life needed just a bit of seasoning.

As cheesy as it sounds, it works. There's something kind of thrilling about spontaneously reaching into a bag, pulling out a country's name and vowing to pay it a little visit - at least in your kitchen. Maybe it's the surprise. You never know what you're going to get, and then before you know it your exploring the cuisine of El Salvador.

It seemed so exotic at first. So cool. So Latin.

That was before I started the pupusa making.

A pupusa is a traditional Salvadorian hot pocket of sorts, made with a dough of corn flour and stuffed with random things, like meat, beans or cheeses. I actually found an Emeril recipe that involved shredded pork and white cheese. He calls it Salvadorian Pulled Pork Pupusa with Pickled Cabbage. It's the only pupusa recipe on the Food Network web site. (I now think I know why.)

Thus began quite the process. The recipe required that the side dish alone sit for 24 hours before eating (I cheated and tasted it a good six hours in). In the interim, the pork cooks for a good four hours. And then there's this little situation with the corn pockets - making the dough, molding little balls, trying to flatten and stuff them with the pork mixture without breaking the dough, which is fairly delicate. In all, I probably spent about seven hours trying to accomplish all this (with down time in between to clean up the kitchen).

The end result was pretty good. I'd probably serve this at a party.

But seven hours? This might even surpass the moussaka in intensity. Or homemade pasta. And on this first go around, I was fairly tired by the time I even got to making my little dough balls. I fell like the pupusas were coming out kind of crappy.

At some point last week, I managed to convince one of my editors to take me to lunch. We decided on Vietnamese, and headed to Miss Saigon for some pho.

On the ride there, I started telling him about my own experience making pho (remember, the whole 10-plus hours making broth). He kind of laughed and said that's exactly why he doesn't make ethnic food.

"Someone else already knows how to make it so well," he said. "It's like sushi. It's an art. I could never make it as good."

His message: Why bother when you could drive around the corner for takeout in under an hour?

But even as I painstakingly rolled my little corn flour balls, trying to keep them from breaking as I stuffed them with pork and cheese, I could appreciate the effort. I could appreciate that someone, at some point in time took the time to come up with this cultural staple. I could appreciate it in a way I never would have had I never tried to make it myself.

It's a pain in the ass, rolling those little corn balls by hand and then frying them. Should I ever find myself in El Salvador enjoying one of these tasty treats - or any comparable restaurant - I'll be sure to thank the cook for his effort. And tomorrow, I'm kind of looking forward to getting back to what I perhaps do best, at least better than making pupusas. Working at a newspaper.

Opa! Greek Glendi style

The lure of a baklava sundae got stronger every day leading to the weekend.

I knew it was time for the Greek Glendi, the annual celebration of all things Greek at St. Barbara's in Sarasota. It's pretty clear when you go to this sort of thing that Greek people know how to eat, and party.

The Glendi was one of the first must go to events I learned about when I moved to Florida. The office I worked in was right up the street, and I think we went both Thursday and Friday for lunches of moussaka and baklava.

Since then, I've learned the Glendi is more fun as a weekend event. Especially with this year's discovery that you can buy a bottle of wine for $15 (two for $25, for the avid wine drinkers) and then spend an afternoon strolling through the little bazaar sipping some vino. Despite common thought to the contrary, Greece can actually put forth a few decent wines. Just stay away from the retsina.

For the most part, us outsiders stay on the periphery of the real fun, sitting in folding white chairs and letting members of the parish captivate us with their Greek dancing. We figured they had a hidden stash of ouzo they weren't serving to the company.

We did become fully involved in the festivities when it came to the eating. I spent much of the week contemplating the menu and decided this would be the year to try the lamb shank, what turned out to be a hearty and warm choice for a pretty frigid evening.

And despite the fact the temperature dropped to about 50 degrees (that's pretty cold for us Floridians) I couldn't leave without my baklava sundae. I wandered over to the lonely looking lady charged with manning the ice cream table on this chilly night.

Whoever came up with this concept was brilliant. They pour the honey and nut mixture - the baklava filling - over ice cream and top with a cherry. I find the cream kind of cuts the sweetness of the honey mix, and lets you enjoy the best part of the baklava without all of the flaky phyllo. All it needed was a good dollop of whipped cream.

I even let the little old Greek woman sucker me into buying the church cookbook. I thought it was the most appropriate memento from the celebration.

Of course that leaves the obvious question: What the heck is a glendi? The answer is actually pretty obvious. Glendi is the Greek work for party.

Opa!

Happiness is ...

... good friends, the beach, a mommy apron, some paella and plenty of vino. Blissful!

France: Simple Cassoulet

So I'll admit, this whole random selection thing isn't working out quite like I planned. But that's OK. I'd rather cheat than let ingredients go to waste or bust my budget.

I was also thinking I'd save a cool country like France for something big. But I had lots of onions, carrots and celery in the fridge that I needed to get rid of. And it's been kind of chilly here, so I wanted to make a warming, quick, one pot dish that I could feed off of for awhile.

I decided to go ahead with a simple version of the French cassoulet, a meat and bean stew that is named for the cassoul pot it is traditionally cooked in (remember this bit of trivia if you ever play Foodie Fight). I don't have a cassoul pan, so I just do it in a regular pot. Some versions are loaded with all sorts of meat, like duck and bacon, but this one keeps it pretty straight forward. And I'm having a lazy weekend.

Of all places, I first learned of this dish on last year's Next Food Network Star. One of the contestants whipped it up as her signature dish. I thought it looked great, so I tried it. This time around I made some changes, using dried instead of fresh herbs (because I had them in my cabinet and didn't have to buy them) and regular pork sausage instead of chicken (because I like it). I also mixed up the technique a bit, letting the veggies cook in the oil from the sausage for added flavor. It came out pretty salty, so on a next go around I'll probably try to make some substitutions to scale back that flavor. I may have also screwed up the ratios substituting dried for fresh herbs. I like to eat it with some crusty bread and sprinkle some parmesean cheese on top.

What you need:

3 tbsps. olive oil

5 links of hot Italian sausage

3 yellow onions, chopped

5 carrots, chopped

5 celery stalks, chopped

10 garlic cloves, chopped

2 tbsps. dried thyme

2 tbsps. dried oregano

1 tbsp. dried rosemary

2 bay leaves

fresh ground pepper

2 cans cannellini beans, rinsed and drained

6 cups chicken stock

What to do:

Heat the olive oil in pan. Remove casings from Italian sausage, add to pot and cook until done. Remove with slotted spoon and place on a paper towel-lined plate.

Add the chopped veggies (including garlic) to the pot with the oil from the sausage. Cook until soft. Add spices and season with pepper. Let cook for about 10 minutes. Then add the beans, chicken stock and Italian sausage back to the pot. Bring to a boil. Let simmer for at least an hour, until the stew becomes thick.

One last thing ... a souvenir, if you will

OK. One last thing about Spain. But this one has been in the cue since my mimosa breakfast.

Two of my favorite things about Spain were the gorgeous, colorful tiles everywhere and the orange blossoms. I remember standing and looking over valleys and gardens and seeing the rows of orange trees that seemed to go on for miles. They smelled incredible.

As far as the tiles go, I managed to score a lot of cheap pottery with designs reminiscent of the traditional tiles. My favorite piece was this teal and white bowl with little pink and yellow accents.

Well I've broken it twice, both times because I was being an idiot. I managed to get it home from Spain in one piece, but did not pack it securely when I moved to Florida. It shattered, but I could not stand to get rid of it. So my dad fixed it. It then seemed like a good idea to display it on a shelf below a heavy drawer of a bookcase I put together myself. Yeah you can guess what happened. Drawer fell. Bowl shattered. Dad fixed it, which really speaks volumes about his craftsmanship. Now, I think the cracks give it character, just like the old tiles.

At some point I put some fake white flowers in it and it became the centerpiece on my kitchen table.

But then when I had the mimosa brunch, I bought one of those crates full of clementines and was trying to figure out what to serve them in. It was perfect!

It looked so nice one of my friends later told me she thought it was just for decoration.

A final thought on Spain ... for now

Well I'm going to leave Spain alone for a little while, but I'm sure will be back with more stories and cooking. My lil bro is a big Spain fan himself, so I'm sure he'll be making an appearance and cooking up some paella and tapas with me, figgy style.

But I feel that it's prudent to have a little discussion about the paella pan. I mean, why would anyone invest in a piece of kitchen equipment that's pretty much good for one recipe?

Basically because the pan is shallow and wide and comes in all different sizes. The sides are sloped and the bottom is dimpled, which helps the rice cook more evenly than a frying pan.

I keep wowing my friends with stories of ones I saw in Spain that were three feet across that chefs used to make the paella over an open fire. Traditionally they make the fire with orange and pine branches, and the smoke infuses flavor into the paella. The flames also help create a nice crust around the edges.

For lack of an open fire, we of course cooked our paella on a charcoal grill. I've also done it on the stove top and it works fine. Mine of course is probably a measly 18 inches. But just big enough for a decent size paella party : )

Spain, El Primer Viaje: Tortilla

Well I know my love of wine started in Spain. Perhaps so did my love of communal dining.

Sushi. Fondue. You name it. There's something about sharing food with the people you love that I find so comforting.

Of course one of my favorites is the traditional Spanish tapas.

Tapas would be the fourth (and sometimes second) of the typical five meals Spanish people eat in their day. For them, this pace isn't about weight loss or keeping their metabolisms going. It's more or less a good excuse to take breaks from work and hang out with friends.

A quick debriefing on the Spanish feeding schedule: Meal one is typically a light breakfast of coffee, light cookies and fruit generally consumed at the ungodly hour that Spaniards wake up. A few hours later, they're in the cafe for drinks and some light tapas (This usually coincided with my morning coffee... I could never get into this early business). Third meal is the big meal during siesta. Anything's fair game. Fourth is the traditional post-work drinking and tapas, followed by dinner in the late evening.

I didn't know much about Spanish cuisine when I went there, but very quickly realized I loved it. Simple things like olives, serrano ham and manchego cheese drizzled with olive oil and all packed with amazing flavor.

And then of course there is the tortilla, a delicious egg and potato omelet that you can mix up with various other add ins.

I've made the tortilla several times before, including a few times with a recipe my brother scored from his host mother when he studied in Spain. For the paella party I made one from the Williams Sonoma Savoring Spain and Portugal cookbook.

A note on the tortilla: The potato-egg ratio is extremely important so the tortilla holds together. I allowed a renegade potato to find it's way into my mix this time around, so it didn't hold as firm as I would have liked it.

What you need:

1/2 cup plus 3 tbsps. olive oil (Live large and get the real Spanish kind. You'll notice a difference in the flavor. They sell it at Publix, and I'm guessing most other decent supermarkets.)

2 lb. baking potatos peeled and sliced 1/4 inch thick

salt and fresh ground pepper

1 yellow onions, thinly sliced

6 eggs, lightly beaten

4 oz. serrano ham

1 large red bell pepper

chopped flat leaf parsley

What to do:

Roast the red pepper. You can do this by heating the oven to about 375. Coat the red pepper in olive oil, salt and pepper and roast for about 20 minutes. Occasionally turn the pepper so all sides get equal attention. After the 20 minutes, put the pepper in a bowel and cover with plastic wrap so the skin gets loose. Let it sit for about 15 minutes. When it is cool enough to handle, remove skin, stem and seeds from inside. Chop and set aside.

Heat the 1/2 cup of olive oil in a frying pan and lightly fry the potatoes until tender, but not browned. You may have to do it in two patches (probably will). When done, transfer to plate and season with salt and fresh ground pepper.

Once you've removed the potatoes, add the onions to the frying pan and cook until golden. Remove and let sit for about 15 minutes.

In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until blended. Add the onions, ham and roasted pepper and combine. Fold in the cooked potatoes.

Heat the remaining oil in the frying pan and pour in the mixture. Cook over low heat for about 10 minutes. Then you'll need to flip the tortilla. You can do this by placing a plate on the top, flipping it over and then sliding it back into the pan. Cook another five minutes or so until the second side has set.

Serve with parsley as garnish.

Spain, El Primer Viaje

There's a lot to be said for a country where people spend much of the day lingering over coffee in the cafe, and then unwind in the evening with a nice glass of vino.

I had no idea Spain was so cut out for me when I went there. I had no way of knowing.

I ended up in Spain during my six-month semester abroad in college. There were two things I really wanted to do when I set my little heart on going to Syracuse for college: 1) Be the editor of the college paper and 2) Study abroad. But when I got to campus I realized I probably couldn't do both. Most people spent their entire college career working their way to the editor's office.

The universe, however, always has a strange way of orchestrating events in my favor. I ended up stepping up earlier than most people, giving me the opportunity to still study abroad if I wanted.

At that point, I wasn't sure. I flirted with the idea of extending my reign as editor. At least until it burned me out. I never expected the politics, drama, stress and tension that came with running a little 10,000 circulation paper with a bunch of extremely passionate, driven and in some cases certifiably crazy people.

I was barely halfway through my term when I realized I was ready for a siesta.

Originally, I figured I would go to London. That's where all the journalism majors went, and some of my friends would be there.

But being one for goal setting and planning ahead, I already knew at this point in my life I wanted to go to Florida. Given that, an editor I worked for during one of my internships raised a good point.

"If you want to go to Florida, don't you think it would be a good idea to learn Spanish," he asked.

Touche. SU also had a program in Madrid (I know, different dialect and all that ... but still better than English) and I started looking into it.

The photos of tiled arches, gothic churches, miles of orange groves and beautiful beaches lured me to the country. And after a few years running on three hours of sleep a night, I really liked this whole siesta prospect.

The reality was, in many ways, nothing what I expected.

I arrived in the country with a group of probably about 100 other college students, many of them from the Greek system and many of them not huge fans of the college paper (I had actually written up arrest reports on some of them). I didn't know anybody, and quite frankly didn't like most of them. I was lonely.

I was still feeling jet lagged when the culture shock started to sink in. I'm one for order. I like to know where I'm going. When my friends and I went on spring break in Chicago, I made up a schedule with a to do list for every day. In Spain, the group spent the first two weeks touring the country. I don't think I ever got an itinerary. I never had any idea where we were going. It drove me crazy.

They would just tell you to get on the bus at a certain time. I would always be there early, only to sometimes wait more than an hour for one of the Spanish tour guides to finish his coffee.

And the whole sleepytime thing was a myth. Turns out, Spanish people sleep less than I was at that point. They stay up into the wee hours of the morning (they don't even eat dinner until 10 p.m.) and then get up at like 6 in the morning. Siesta hardly makes up for it.

My mom kept telling me to just come home.

But eventually, I made a friend who was just as lonely and frustrated as I was. I remembered this semester was supposed to be fun and dropped my course load down to the bare minimum 12 credits I needed to be a full time student.

(This was actually really brilliant and strategic on my part. I needed one more science class for my degree, so I took the ecology of Spain, which involved learning about how Americans are destroying the earth and trips kayaking and horseback riding... I don't remember going to class after a while, but still got an A. Much better than physics or chemistry. I also knocked out a required foreign language credit and filled in the rest of the schedule with two literature classes that regularly met at the taverna to discuss writing over vino: Don Quixote and Hemingway in Spain... I cheated on Don Quixote and took the English version. I liked college better Spanish style.)

The rest of my days I spent in at the cafes. Mornings, I sat in the coffee shops reading for class or just people watching. In the evenings, I met up with friends (I did make some eventually) for tapas or vino. I'd go home at night and have dinner with my host family. Sometimes I just walked around the city taking it all in and thinking. I traveled. I found comfort in Harry Potter.

I went to Spain with a to do list of all the things I wanted to see and places I wanted to go in Madrid, but ended up putting it all off until the last week I was there. I quickly picked up the phrase "manana." I'll just get to it later. Just enjoying the simplicity of everyday Spanish life became more important.

Don't get me wrong. Six months hardly changes a person. It's still hard not to get caught up in the "where is my life going" and "am I on the right path." A few years ago when we finished a big project I started to stress about what life was going to bring me next. A co-worker quoted that cheesy line from the Matrix, something like "Don't worry where the path is going. Just walk to path."

But when I think about it now, I realize I learned that lesson a long time ago. I learned it from the Spanish. The hard part, sometimes, is honoring it.

One note on the photo, or lack thereof. All my travel photos are in Buffalo. At one point I scanned a bunch in so I could use them on the blog, but apparently forgot to include any from Spain. So I'll just get to it later : )

Spain, El Primer Viaje: Paella

Manana.

They say it a lot in Spain. Tomorrow. That's when I'll get to it.

It flies in the face of everything we value in this country. Don't put off until tomorrow what you can do today. The early bird catches the worm.

That's not how the Spaniards see it.

No, they'll sit for hours lingering over a good glass of wine or a cup of fine coffee. You could sit at a restaurant all night waiting for your bill if you do not ask for it. They don't want to rush you.

I happened to be in Madrid when the first Starbucks opened in continental Europe. People were outraged. They just couldn't understand why anyone would put their coffee in a paper cup and run, not sit there and enjoy it.

This whole laid back attitude drove me nuts at first, a highly driven, motivated and anxious college student. If the group leaders said be on the bus at 9, I was there early, only to sit sometimes for an hour and a half waiting for the trip to start. Usually, we were waiting for someone to finish their morning coffee.

So it seems appropriate that my friends and I have been saying we need to have a party ever since I got my paella pan. That was over a year ago at Christmas.

We kept putting it off. There was always manana. Finally, this weekend we did it. We hauled all of our meats and seafood and spices down to the beach, lit a grill, sipped some vino and had our own little paella party.

We used a recipe from a local woman who owns this business Tapas and Fun. She will come to your house and cook traditional Spanish foods. Since she hands out the recipes at her events, I figure it's OK to post it.

It came out all right. Some of us thought it was slightly light on flavor (but we're a group that likes spicy and bold in the spirit of Bobby Flay and Emeril). So next time we'll probably make our own go at it - more onion, more garlic, chicken stock, maybe some chorizo. As far as Spanish paella goes, it was very traditional.

And there will be a next time, now that we've mastered using the grill at the beach. Besides, there are so many things to say about Spain. Such an awesome cuisine. So many personal stories.

I'll get to them all at some point, but for now I'm still recovering from the beach blast. I guess they'll just have to wait until manana : )

Paella Mixta: Seafood and Meat Paella

(We doubled the recipe)

What you need:

1 small tomato, chopped

1 small onion, minced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 lb. boneless pork loin, cubed

1 lb. chicken breast, cubed

20 medium sized shrimp

15 clams

15 mussels

2 cups clam stock

1 tsp. paprika

pinch saffron

salt

14 oz. rice (boma is the traditional kind ... arborio is an easier to find variety that works well)

lemon wedges

olive oil

What to do:

Heat about 3 tbsps. of olive oil in your pan. We used the grill, but you can also successfully do the paella on the stovetop. When the oil has heated, add chicken and pork and cook until meat is done.

Add the onions and garlic and cook until golden. Stir in the tomato and let cook for 15 minutes over low heat.

Add the paprika, saffron, rice, salt, clam stock and two cups of water and bring to a boil. Add the mussels and clams so that they open.

At this point, you want to keep cooking the dish until the rice is done. Cover with aluminum foil to lock in moisture and check periodically. Add more water as needed. The shrimp can go in when the dish is a few minutes from done.

Serve with lemon wedges that guests can squeeze over the dish.

Thailand: Reddish curry with seafood and veggies

I cheated again. This time for no real reason. It just seemed like a good day for curry.

So I decided to jet onto Thailand. No random pull from the wine bag of fun. Just a craving for curry.

As usual, I started seeking out recipes and comparing notes, looking for a good foundation. I ultimately ended up adapting a recipe from Cooks Illustrated: The Best International Recipes. (A birthday/bon voyage gift from my siblings when I started the blog... Thanks guys!). I made some adjustments based on what I could find at my local Publix. They didn't have the fresh lemongrass called for in the recipe, so I used lemongrass paste. And I couldn't find fresh red jalapenos, but there was one jar left in the canned goods aisle. I knew it was meant to come home with me. The recipe says you can also substitute green jalapenos. I guess the red is supposed to give it color. Mine came out kind of brownish anyway. I was hoping for pink.

The final product came out all right. At some point in the process I realized this is a hell of a lot of spices and flavors that go into this recipe. Never again will I underestimate a good curry. A note to my vegetarian friends, you could easily do this one without the seafood and go straight up veggies. Not sure what to make of the fish sauce ...

What you need:

For paste ...

8 dried red chiles (I used the de arbol kind)

6 cloves garlic, minced

4 shallots, minced

1/3 cup water

4 tbsps. lemon grass paste (or 2 stalks ... bottom 5 inches only)

3 medium red jalapenos, seeds and ribs removed

2 tbsps. minced cilantro stems

2 tbsps. peanut oil

1 tbsp. zest from a lime

2 tsps. coriander

1 tsp. ground cumin

1 tsp. grated ginger

1 tsp. tomato paste

1 tsp. salt

For other yumminess ...

1 1/4 cups water

2 tbsps. fish sauce

1 tbsp. brown sugar

1/2 lb. shrimp

1/2 lb. scallops

2 cups carrots (I bought the crinkle kind that looks like a chip)

1 package snow peas

1 package mushrooms (I used portabella, for lack of anything more interesting)

1 cup sliced red and green bell peppers

1 can coconut milk (14 oz)

1/2 cup basil leaves

1/2 cup cilantro leaves

2 tbsps. juice from lime

Jasmine rice for serving

What to do:

Preheat the over to 350. Place the dried chiles on a baking sheet and toast for about five minutes. Remove from oven and let cool. Meanwhile, combine all of the other paste ingredients. When the dried chiles are cool, add those (minus the seeds and such) to the mix. Blend into a fine paste (I used my immersion blender).

Prepare the veggies and steam until they start to get a little tender. They will cook somewhat when added to the curry paste, but you want to give them a little jump start.

When the paste is mixed, put it in a skillet and cook until sizzling. Add the water and fish sauce and bring to a boil. Add the seafood and veggies and bring mixture back to a simmer.

Remove the seafood and veggies from the curry and set aside. Add the coconut milk and cook until curry sauce thickens. Add the seafood and veggies and remove from heat. Add the basil, cilantro and lime juice. Serve over jasmine rice.

A post script on this recipe: I was extremely tired by the time I finished making this on Saturday. Long story, but after an early morning and a day of cooking I could barely taste the dish and wasn't sure how I felt about it.

I heated some up for dinner Monday night and it's definitely much tastier on the re-up. The sauce thickens and the flavors meld together nicely. I still think it could use a little more spice. There is a little kick to it, but I could stand to go hotter.

Vietnam, revisited: Pho ba

Having barely made a dent in my to do list of countries - I've done 15 so far - there really isn't any time to go back for repeat visits.

But I guess sometimes in life instead of moving forward we do go back to places we've already been. Maybe there's something we missed the first time around. Maybe there's something comforting in knowing what to expect. Maybe we just like it.

In this case, I decided to have another go around with Vietnam after trying the roasted chicken soup at this place in Sarasota, Miss Saigon.

I was skeptical at first when my friends raved about the dish. I've never been a big fan of chicken soup. Or chicken for that matter. It can be so cliche. Would all of those Asian spices really kick it up to my palate?

Despite my wariness, I decided to try it on this cold, crappy day right before Thanksgiving.

It was amazing.

It comes as a subtle broth with rice noodles in a big bowl, a crisp, roasted chicken on the side along with jalapenos, bean sprouts, etc. The lightness of the broth really lets the anise stand out, and I love that flavor.

It's so simple I figured I should be able to replicate it at home. So I did some Internet research to come up with key ingredients and set out to create my own version.

My first stab at it was pretty good. Not quite like the restaurant, but still tasty.

I'll fully acknowledge I cheated and used store bought broth, rather than making my own. (Vietnamese cooks would probably cringe to hear this since the broth is the focus of many of their dishes). I used the Kitchen Basics all natural kind. This worked out OK for the most part, but the flavors of the broth were a little overpowering and kind of took over the dish more than I would have liked. Next time, I'll try it with the low sodium version, which has a milder flavor.

I also just used a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket. Come on. Aren't return trips supposed to be leisurely and easy?

Here's what I came up with so far. Thoughts?

What you need:

2 cartons Kitchen Basics stock

2 yellow onions, sliced

2 cinnamon sticks

5 pieces star anise

3 inches peeled ginger

1 tbsp. coriander

1 rotisserie chicken

1 package rice noodles

For serving:

Basil leaves

Scallions

Bean sprouts

Sliced, fresh jalapenos

Soy sauce

Sriacha sauce (the really spicy Asian kind)

What I did:

I started by putting the two cartons of chicken broth in a pot and adding a few cups of water and the coriander. I put the cinnamon sticks, star anise and ginger in a coffee filter, tied it with kitchen string and added to the pot to bring to a boil. I let it simmer for about an hour before adding the sliced onions and simmering for another 10 minutes until they were tender.

While all of this was going on, I cut the chicken into soup size pieces and prepared the rice noodles as instructed on the package. When the broth was done, I removed the coffee filter with spices.

Pour the broth over some noodles and add desired mix ins to taste.

I know, kind of anticlimactic after all of that. But easy, right?