We Cooked Seafood By the Seashore – Sicilian Mussels and Rolled Sardines in Sicily

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When we were planning our epic European summer trip, my boyfriend and I chose to stay mostly in apartments – we did this partly because it was cheaper than staying in hotels and more private than staying in hostels (which we did in Naples, and that was a weird flashback to my twenties), but only partly.  The other reason we chose apartment living was, as ever, food-related: we wanted to be able to cook, ideally making use of local ingredients we wouldn't have access to at home.

So, given that information, you might be surprised to learn that we didn't cook in our own place once for the entire trip – not in Berlin, or Bologna (where we did cook in someone else's home), or Rome, or any of the other cities where we had access to our own kitchen.  Oh, sure, we made coffee, and ate cheeses and meats which we bought at markets and grocery stores, and drank wine...but we didn't actually cook a meal.

My Bologna Has a First Name – Learning to Make Pasta the Bolognese Way with Taste of Italy

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Holy crap – it’s been a YEAR since I posted here.  I am so ashamed.  To be fair, the past year has been the busiest of my life so far: I started teaching middle school, jumping right in at the deep end with no previous full-time experience, and I was (as you’d probably have guessed) completely consumed.  Any time I had to myself was spent grading, answering parent and student emails, lesson planning, or maybe, if I got really lucky, zoning out in front of a crappy TV show with a bottle of wine and my concerned boyfriend.  Needless to say, I didn’t cook much, let alone photograph it.  Which is too bad, really, since my apartment was super cute and photogenic, and living off Goldfish all year left me unhealthy and heavier than usual by June…  

Anyway, excuses aside, I come back now to share just a smidgen of the bounty from my much-needed summer vacation!  My boyfriend and I saved up a few thousand dollars, freed ourselves from our responsibilities, and set off for Europe the week after school let out – we went to Berlin for a week, then took trains through Austria and all down through Italy, ending in Sicily, and then we hopped over to France for a few weeks to help a friend with her new baby.  It was a pretty epic 7.5-week journey (all of which is documented on my Instagram feed), and while we didn’t cook often, what we did cook was as epic as the trip itself.

Prosciutto and Pastries and Prosecco, Oh My! The Foodie Low-Down on My Italian Adventure

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#stuffmyface #ItalyAdventure #girltime by @ahputnam

Hello, strangers! I realize I haven’t seen you around here in MONTHS, and that’s entirely my fault. I had this idea (I’m always having these ideas…) that when I was in Italy I would cook and photograph it (badly, with my iPhone) for you, and post at least once or twice, but alas, like so many of my ideas this one lacked follow-through. I did very little of anything that could be called ‘cooking’, preferring to spend my time eating paprika-flavored Pringles and making Caprese salads and roasted chicken breast and veggies when I needed to eat a real meal inside my home. And of course much of my consumption happened outside the apartment, because: ITALY. That said, I did make a Thanksgiving dinner for my Italian friends (and a few Americans), including my famous pumpkin pie recipe and a whole roasted turkey that would have fed twice as many of us, so the trip wasn’t completely without kitchen activity.

For those of you who don’t follow me on Instagram or Twitter, I offer here by way of apology for my absence some of my favorite foodie photos from the trip (for those of you who do follow me, I’m throwing in some new pics), and at the end of the post I’ll link to the recipes I used for Thanksgiving – I’m happy to report that the Italians were properly blown away, especially by the pumpkin pie and the stuffing, which was unlike anything they’d ever tried before. I also promise to work harder to get back to our regularly scheduled programming, and to share some of the exciting developments that have occurred in my life since last we met.

Pics and captions are after the jump!

Let's Just Hope My Language Skills Are a Little More Authentic... Americanized Tiramisu and an Announcement!

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Things have been reeeeaaaaally quiet over here on the baking blog – lest you think I hadn't noticed my neglect, rest assured that it's been bugging me for weeks.  I started working full time in April and since then my free time has been less plentiful and often takes place outside the hours of good natural light so essential to food photography.  I also lived in an apartment with a shared kitchen stocked with other people's things, so I never knew what supplies I had to make a recipe.

None of this is an excuse, though.  I should have prioritized this blog more.  Baking makes me happy, as does blogging about it, but for some reason I haven't done either for the past few months.  It's been a rough year, but I'm finally starting to feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, which should mean more energy and time and love to put into baked goods.  The only catch is that I'm moving again, this time to Italy – I'll be living off savings and spending my days writing and yoga-ing and writing and hiking and writing.  Hopefully a new book will form in those months of having nothing on my plate but writing and pasta.  In which case, you may not see me here for a little bit longer.  That said, should I find myself in need of a break from the computer screen, which is pretty likely, and hiking isn't doing the trick, you can bet I'll share whatever concoction I whip up over there on this blog here – fair warning, though, I'm not bringing my nice camera, so it'll be all-iPhone pics, all the time.

I knew I wanted to share this big change in my life with all of you (especially those of you who have been SO patient while I post so erratically!), so when a recipe for tiramisu landed in my inbox, it seemed like serendipity; I decided (despite this disturbing typo in the recipe) that I wanted to make it to celebrate my upcoming move and announce it here on the blog that has seen me through so many changes in location and circumstance.  There were, as is customary in my life, a few things that went differently from the plan, but I got there in the end and the result was delicious – I can only hope my non-food-related life winds up so successful!

A Dream Deferred: Italian Almond Cookies

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When my guy and I were in Rome a couple of years ago with my brother and his girlfriend for Christmas, the apartment we stayed in was just down the street from a tiny bakery that had the reputation of selling some of the best cookies and panettone in the whole city – a lucky accident of which we took full advantage!  Every few days we would wander in and make use of my ever-more-limited Italian to buy a bag of treats: chocolate-dipped Christmas trees, jam studded thumbprints, mini pistachio biscotti, and our absolute favorites, chewy, dense, heavy-sweet almond cookies.  Those ones were always the first to go, and we kept finding ourselves having to negotiate over who got the last one.  If only I didn't require so much time stalling while I tried to remember the word for almond (mandorla – of course now I can remember it!), we might have just gotten bagfuls of those each time and called it a day!

So of course the minute we got back to the UK I looked up a recipe.  And then I bookmarked that recipe, bought ground almonds, and... promptly put off making the cookies.  I think I avoided it for so long at first because almond paste (one of the main ingredients) is super expensive, but after a while I just kept forgetting about them.

London Restaurant Recommendations

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Okay, it's time for the round-up of my favorite places to eat in London!  We're going to go by price, since I know that's often the most important consideration for visitors to this fine and expensive city – bear in mind, though, that London is very expensive, so when I say places are 'cheap' I mean sort of 10 pounds for a main, 5 if you choose very wisely.  It really doesn't get cheaper than that, except in McDonald's or a local 'chippie' (Fish n' Chip shop).  So here we go!

Cheap places (usually better for lunch than dinner):

Baozi Inn, in London's Chinatown, is a teeny little place that serves really good (and apparently authentic) Chinese dumplings, soups, and other dishes.  It's great value for money and quite cozy, so perfect for a stop-in on a rainy afternoon fighting the crowds in the West End.

New Culture Revolution is another great (and cheap!) Chinese place – lots of basics on the menu, noodle dishes and stir-fries etc, but my absolute favorite is the dumpling soup with pork and Chinese leaves.  The broth is homemade, the dumplings are tender, and the meat tastes healthy and clean, not full of gristle and grease as you sometimes get.  The location in Angel is just off the super-busy high street, and they always have room for walk-ins (at least so far), so it's a great option for lunch or dinner away from the maddening crowd (are you sensing a theme in my restaurant choices?  You sense correctly!).

Borough Market is always a good idea if you're looking for an inexpensive breakfast or lunch – note that a trip to the market is rarely inexpensive, as there's so much temptation that I almost always run out of money very quickly, but it's easy to get a great sandwich or a delicious plate of something Greek/Italian/Spanish/you-name-it for about a fiver (the above meat pies are even cheaper).  Can't beat that!  Plus, the people watching is divine.  The only drawback here is that it's all outdoors, so your usually-lovely seat in the next-door churchyard might be a bit soggy if the weather is doing its usual English thing...