Slices of Life from Belize: September 16, 2013

Don't Know Why, There's No Sun Up In The Sky -- Stormy Weather

Well, it seems my Open Letter to Invest 93L produced results, just not the ones I was hoping for. The storm made a name for herself, now known as Tropical Storm Ingrid, and it has been pounding Mexico, along with her brother, Tropical Storm Manual. And here in Corozal? It's still been raining. Matter of fact, as I write this there is a rather large cell hovering over us, and we're just waiting for the skies to open up...again. And unfortunately, the forecast doesn't look too promising for the next couple of days either. Rumblings of ark building are starting to take over many a Facebook chat. A number of people who have lived here far longer than we have say they can't remember it being this rainy for so many consecutive days. 

And if you recall from my note to Invest 93L, I posted some pictures of the road in front of Dave and Dianna Rider's house. If you want to find out more about what it's been like having a quagmire at your doorstep, then pop on over to their blog and read the latest entry, "Stuck in the Muck Again." 

Photo courtesy of Lynn Nichiporowich 

All I know is that this weather has gotten really old and my laundry pile is almost out of control.

Art In The Park

On Saturday night David and I decided that no matter what kind of weather we might have, we were going to check out the Art In The Park Festival in downtown Corozal. Specifically, we wanted to see the latest paintings from Ashani and see what other vendors might have to offer.

Unfortunately, it was a bit of a bust. The rains put more than a damper on the turnout, and it wasn't the best weather to display water-based paintings. 

But I thought I would share a painting I bought from Ashani last month:

David made the frame and we have it hanging out in our porch. Of course, he had some help with the installation.

Miss Bronte (a.k.a. KitKat, a.k.a. #$%&^&% when she is really bad, which is frequently) found out that ladders can be great playthings. However, it does make it a bit more of a challenge to do anything while she's on it.

Temporary Guests

As a result of the rain we've been having, we had an unexpected visitor on the outside of our screen door:

And yes, it is a tarantula. I named her Clarice, and she hung out with us, shielded from most of the rain, for the entire day and part of the evening. Bronte showed some initial interest in her, but quickly tired of that game and left Clarice in peace.

The other visitor we had was...

...this incredible moth. With no exaggeration, its wingspan was at least six or seven inches and it's coloring was exactly like tree bark. 

Thanks to my fellow blogger and Facebook friend, Papi Thomas, he enlightened me on what it was: "We've been visited as well. I think it's called the Black Witch Moth. "Mariposa de la muerte"...in Mexican folklore, a harbinger of death. But in Yucatek Maya it is X-mahan-nah which means "borrow house". Ours just borrowed the bathroom for a few hours before we released him."

And hey, speaking of Facebook, feel free to send me a friend request so you can find out some of the whacky and not-so-whacky stuff that goes in our lives here in Belize between blog posts.

Quick Bites

I had fun in the kitchen last week making some old favorites and trying a couple of new recipes. Here are some of the things that appeared on our dinner table:

Asian Chicken Burgers with Cabbage Slaw - the burger is a riff on a recipe from Sara Moulton. It's nice change of pace from a beef burger, and the soy sauce, ginger, and sesame oil add amazing flavor. For the slaw, I used the leftover cabbage from the burger, julienned some carrots, and made a cooked dressing that included eggs, apple cider vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt, pepper, and a bit of crema.

Black beans, Tomatoes, Italian sausage with white rice - One of the things I love about this dish is that it is incredibly versatile. Have leftover chicken bits or ground beef? Substitute it for the sausage. Want a veggie version? Skip the protein altogether. If I'm feeling ambitious, I'll soak and cook dried black beans. But if you're looking for a quicker method, canned beans work just fine. Saute some onions, stir in some cumin, a touch of cayenne pepper, the beans with a bit of their juice, tomatoes, and browned sausage, and you've got dinner! If David had his way, we would have this once a week, every week.

BLT with Fried Egg served on Homemade Cuban Bread and Pan Fried Potatoes - These are all my favorite foods right on one plate. Swoon! This is the dish I would eat at least once a week, every week. I want to send a shout-out to Mardi and Mike Rathbun for sharing this sandwich recipe with me on Facebook.

Garlic Roasted Shrimp with Sherry-Tomato Sauce served over Homemade Pasta - I often make garlic roasted shrimp. Super simple to do, too. Just smash up about four cloves of garlic, throw them into about 2/3 cup of olive oil, and saute until the garlic starts to brown. Discard the garlic, then pour the garlic olive oil over the shrimp and pop into a pre-heated 425-degree oven for 8 minutes. But this time, I wanted to try a different direction. I made the shrimp as noted above, but also put together a sherry vinegar and tomato sauce that we had in another fish recipe not too long ago. For that, I put some chopped tomatoes, onions,  sherry vinegar, salt, and pepper into the food processor. Whizzed it around for a bit, then added about 1/2 cup of the garlic olive oil the shrimp cooked in. After cooking the homemade pasta, I piled on the garlic shrimp and drizzled the sherry-tomato sauce over everything. Very tasty! Next time, I'll try to remember to sprinkle some chopped parsley over the top to add some color contrast to the plate and be able to say in all honesty that there are greens in the meal.

  
 Pan Grilled Fish Fillet Sandwiches with Onion Strings - That sherry tomato sauce I used in the pasta dish? Well the leftovers got used on this fish sandwich. And please don't ask me what kind of fish it is. None of it is labeled in the stores, and when I've asked the most common reply after, "I don't know" is "It's seafish." But whatever it is, it tastes great and only takes about seven minutes of cooking per side on medium(ish) heat. However, the real star on the plate, in my humble opinion, are these onion strings. They are so seriously good that you can't stop eating them and may not want regular ole' onion rings again.

Making Homemade Pasta

As I've got more comfortable working with various dough recipes, I began to think it might be fun to make my own pasta. I could just imagine strands of spaghetti and fettuccine, along with sheets of lasagna noodles draped over wooden racks, drying just so, tracks from Andrea Bocelli's Romanza CD playing in the background, and me, covered oh-so-slightly with a dusting of flour and a satisfied grin on my face.

I then gave myself a Gibbs-Smack and snapped out of it. For starters, I knew pasta dough requires only two basic ingredients: flour and eggs. With my propensity to screw up simple recipes, I knew the risk level was high and the chance of success slim. Second, would the time and effort that I presumed it would take to make pasta be worth it? And last, but not least, I couldn’t justify buying a pasta maker if it turned out that it would become a one-and-done endeavor. Heaven knows I had enough other gadgets that seemed like a good idea at time of purchase, then were shoved to the back of a cupboard, never to be seen again. I shelved the pasta making idea to the back recesses of my brain and tried my hand at other recipes.

Fast forward to about three weeks ago. We were out to dinner with a bunch of friends, when the topic somehow turned to cooking and kitchen gadgets. I mentioned my pasta making desire and the justification issue about buying the equipment. Well, it just so happened that Bruce and Colleen brought their pasta maker to Belize. They hadn’t used it since coming here and offered to lend it to me. Eccellente! (Don’t you just love my command of a foreign language?)

The bright and shiny CucinaPro pasta maker, courtesy of Colleen and Bruce

Anyway, before diving into any pasta making efforts, I thought it might be a good idea to do some research. With it being my first attempt, I didn’t want to use a recipe that would generate tons of pasta, just enough to get the hang of the process. I also wanted to get a consensus for drying methods and times. I ended up going with the info found at the Coquinaria website.

I actually ended up making two batches of pasta on two different days. The following is a mash-up of those experiences.

On the first go-round, I used the flour/egg proportions found in the Coquinaria recipe and used my KitchenAid to blend them together. Because I was aiming for a silky texture, I opted to use Bebe Agua flour, which is finer than regular all purpose. I found I needed to keep scraping down the flour for it to fully incorporate. While kneading it a bit, the dough still felt a bit sticky, so I added more flour before wrapping it up to rest for about 30 minutes.

When the dough was ready, I cut it into four somewhat equal portions and we started the pasta making process. With this type of pasta maker, I suppose you could do it by yourself, if you have three hands. As I don’t, I enlisted David to help.

We feed the dough through the pasta maker a few times, set on its widest setting. Then, we stepped the settings down, one notch at a time, and passed the dough through again. Once it was at the thickness we thought it should be, we passed it through the spaghetti cutter.

The dough was still kinda’ sticky, so it didn’t pass through the blades as smoothly as we would like. But it did look like spaghetti, so we knew we were on the right track. It also went faster than I thought to go through all the settings. Following the recipe, I decided to put the pasta in a bird’s nest:

 

While it looks cute, it turned out that it wasn’t the best way to dry this pasta…mostly because it was too sticky. The result was that the strands clumped up a bit in spots. On the high side, when I cooked it later that day, we found that, in spite of an occasional clump, the spaghetti tasted good!

The next day, I figured out what adjustments needed to be made to the flour/egg mixture and set to work. This time, I used 1 ½ cups of Bebe Agua flour to two eggs. Also, I went old-school and mixed them by hand.

 

The result was way, way better with regards to texture…no stickiness! After the dough had rested, we started the pasta making process again.

 

First pass through the pasta maker at its widest setting



Dough after a couple of more passes

Dough at desired thickness

This time, we made spaghetti and fettucine.

Yea! Fresh made spaghetti!

Instead of putting them into bird nests, I laid them out straight on a lightly floured dishtowel. This worked out great and resulted in none of the strands clumping together.

Spaghetti on the left, fettucine on the right

I wanted to test how the pasta would behave if it wasn’t used right away. So, I put the pasta into zip-lock bags and threw them in the fridge for a few days.

On the night I decided to make the pasta, the strands were still flexible…rather like the texture of store-bought fresh pasta. I opted to cook both pastas, putting the fettucine in the salted water first, then a minute later, adding the spaghetti. All told, it took about five minutes for it to reach the desired doneness.

Earlier in the week, I had made a batch of Bolognese sauce and had that warming on the burner. Everything got plated up and we were ready to dive in.

 

You guys, the pasta tasted awesome! It tasted fresh and had just enough chew, without being underdone or gummy in any way. It’s what pasta is supposed to taste like.

But then the big question was: is it something we would do again? In short, you bet. It really takes no time at all to make the dough and the process for cutting it through the pasta maker is a breeze. With a tiny bit of planning, it would be easy to do a small batch for dinner any night of the week. That being said, I was so pleased with how the pasta tasted after being refrigerated that I plan to set aside a day to make a big batch of both types of pasta which I can then freeze. In the meantime, I want to figure out some fillings for making ravolinis and tortellinis, then whip up batches of those.

At this rate, I may never go back to using boxed pasta again! Colleen and Bruce: I owe you dinner.