Fondue party to end the holiday season

Fondue party, a quintessential winter food, is a fun way to end a holiday season. It can feed a crowd or a couple and you don't have to slave in the kitchen all day to whip it up.

For a small crowd - and for the Three Kings Day I like to have three basic types of fondues going:

a beef fondue, called Fondue Bourguignonne, a cheese fondue and a chocolate fondue for dessert. (For a bigger crowd I might add a seafood fondue cooked in an aromatic broth and wine.)

For a beef fondue I heat olive oil with red wine and the guests cook small cubes of beef fillet in it at the table. Then dip the meat in a variety of sauces, mostly cold, like a garlic dip (sour cream with minced garlic nad herbs), curry dip ( Greek yogurt, mango chutney, curry powder and cayenne) tomato-chipotle dip (sour cream or Greek yogurt, a touch of mayo, tomato paste, chipotle sauce and a touch of ketchup). I add to it some mango pickles, avocado and melon balls.

For a small party, where there is no side cheese fondue (Swiss version: ementhaler and gruyere cheese, white wine a little kirsch liqueur) going on at the side to dip vegetables (bell peppers in all color varieties, celery, cherry tomatoes, cauliflower of all colors, broccoli, champignones, etc.) and pieces of bread in, I serve also one hot sauce, bernaise, for dipping veggies.

Finally, a dessert: cut up fruits (pineapple, mango, papaya, pears) and strawberries dipped in chocolate fondue (melted chocolate with orange, coffee and chocolate liqueurs).

Happy ( and Tasty) Three Kings' Day!

Flying over Puerto Rico

Leaving Mayaguez airport on a Cape Air flight
There were only two passengers on this flight... but Cape Air never cancels flights

When I was planning to leave PR for two weeks of Christmas/New Year vacation I decided to take a Cape Air flight from Mayaguez to San Juan instead of driving to San Juan and flighing from there.

The extra expense of flying was more than offset by not having to pay for 2 weeks of parking at SJU, not having to drive there and ... as an added bonus ... seeing Puerto Rico from the air. Here are a few pictures:

Lago de Guajataca
Over the mountains
In the clouds
Approaching San Juan
Cape Air planes at the San Juan airport
Starting the return flight from San Juan Flying over Isla Verde
Somewhere over NW coast... does anybody know where this is?
And over the mountains again.

Now I am thinking of taking a weekend trip to St Croix ( I have previously visited both St Thomas and St John, but haven't been to the largest of the USVIs) with Cape Air: the connection is good: leaving Mayaguez at 9:25 I can get to St Croix in about two hours... and the fair from MAZ is only $240 round trip - less than from San Juan.

The perils of obedience revisited

Please, make an important New Year's resolution to encourage thoughtful disobedience!

I recently learned - with an utmost horror - that a repeat of a famous Milgram experiment of 1961, in 2008 gave even more horrifying results that the original one.

Here is what Discovery magazine writes about both these experiments and their horrifying results:

'In the 1961 experiment, Yale University professor Milgram asked volunteers to deliver increasingly strong electric “shocks” to other people, who appeared to be test subjects but were really actors, if they answered certain questions incorrectly. Milgram found that, after hearing an actor cry out in pain at 150 volts, 82.5 percent of participants continued administering shocks, most to the maximum 450 volts.

The results, now a fixture in psychology textbooks, suggested that people’s moral attitudes can be suppressed when they’re put in a situation of obedience. Although no actual shocks were delivered and the sounds of agony came from a tape-recording, many of the volunteers suffered stress from the task and replication of the experiments was deemed unethical.
In the new study, to be published in American Psychologist, Burger replicated the gist of the original experiment but included measures to minimize the psychological stress on the test subjects, such as limiting the shocks to 150 volts and not letting them administer any further shocks even if they indicated their willingness.

The new participants were reminded repeatedly that they could stop at any time, while in Milgram’s version, participants were told, “The experiment requires that you go on,” if they expressed hesitation. Again, however, the vast majority of the 29 men and 41 women taking part were willing to push the button knowing it would cause pain to another human. Even when another actor entered the room and questioned what was happening, most were still prepared to continue. About 70 percent continued the shocks up to 150 volts and were willing to go even higher. “That was surprising and disappointing,” Burger said'.

... and absolutely horrifying!

So let's discourage blind obedience and encourage conscientious disobedience! All of us! Now! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!

Happy New Year!

Let's have a toast:

and some tapas:

And if you wish for abundance of riches in 2009 you might want to try a Spanish habit of eating (quickly) 12 grapes at midnight!

All sweet ones symbolize months of prosperity, the sour ones - less so. So let's have a sweet grape year - all of us!

High on High!

Post Christmas weekend was devoted to high culture... which in Atlanta - at least as far as visual art goes - means High Museum of Art.

Art is one of the things I miss most living in Puerto Rico (the other being: comfortable housing, decent roads, fresh vegetables, less bureaucracy etc. ).

Yes, I have visited -more than once - the musea ( I know that in English I should have written museums but for a student of Latin it sounds soooooo totally wrong, I'll stick with the correct Latin plural from museum, that is musea) in Ponce and San Juan, but High in Atlanta, in addition to its impressive permanent collection, exhibits regualrly interesting collections from other leading musea in the world.

And right now it had three such exhibitions going on at once, and I did not want to miss any of them. So I decided to devote one day to see The Masterpieces from Louvre and Medieval and Renaissance Treasures from Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Please click on the links and come see them with me - you won't regret it!

But one of the days had to be devoted solely to one of the biggest archeological art discoveries of the previous century: the terracota army of the first emperor of China.

Its sheer magnitude is mind boggling: as is the artistry of each individual piece

So, please, click on the exhibition link, see the masterpieces of ancient China, watch the videos, ENJOY!

HO! HO! HO!

This Christmas was fun!

First I ran around Atlanta, freezing (since I had no time to go to storage and retrieve my winter clothes), shopping for ethnic food - both Swedish and Polish... and for American Christmas Day turkey dinner, too.... since my daughter wanted to have all these traditions observed during the holidays.


Both in Poland and Sweden the biggest, most important, traditional feast is a Christmas Eve dinner:

in Poland a "fasting" (here fasting just meaning: no meat) feast of seven ... no, not seven fishes, as is the tradistion in Italy, but seven...or nine... or even twelve different dishes (most of them fish, though), which you begin to consume when a first star is spotted in the sky .

Don't worry about what to do, when the sky is overcats: someone will eventually get hungry enough and insist he spotted a star... and everybody will accept that gratefully.

In Sweden a traditional Christmas eve dinner is a Julbord, a Christmas smorgoasbord.... with all sorts of herrings, lax, but also ham, meatballs, sausages, cheeses.

Thus in both Poland and Sweden an overabundance of food, just rather different types of food.Swedish food was far easier to get, thanks to IKEA, which had all sorts of Swedish fare: herrings, crispbreads, cheeses, caviar, Swedish ham, lingonberries, Princess cake...


Polish food was nearly impossible to find in Atlanta, so I finally gave up on most traditional Polish Christmas Eve dishes, except for my daughter's favorite:

cabbage ( half fresh cabbage, half sauerkraut) sateueed with porcini mushrooms,

...which , however, she'll get first tomorrow, accompanying a pork roast with plums,
not a pan fried fat fish, as Polish Christmas tradition would demand, since that particular kind of fish was not available even in the World Farmers' Market :-(((

I also had to give up on a traditional Polish dessert, which I love:

a poppy seed sufflet with tropical fruit and whipped cream: trying to buy a pound of poppy seeds in Atlanta could get me suspected of attempting to make opium.... not a particularly appealing prospect.

When I lived in central Texas I could always drop to any of the ethnic Czech bakeries,

order a poppy seed strudel...

and ask to buy a pound of poppy seeds for my sufflet from them. Besides, in Texas, Minnesota and Colorado there were Polish ethnic shops, but there is none in Atlanta. Had I been planning this better I could have ordered everything from Chicago by mail, but I did not.

Next I was preparing all the dishes I could, just as my daughter wished to have them, being in a traditional mood this year, but then I tried really hard not to eat them myself, as nearly all are too fat, too heavy, in short: completely unsuitable for a diabetic.

And a Christmas miracle happened: I lost seven pounds during the Christmas week, surrounded with all that food. If that's no miracle, I don't know what is ;-)!

Bacalaitos

or salt cod fritters are a favorite snack in Puerto Rico.

They came from Spain and there are called bunuelos de bacalao and are round, looking more like donoughts ( codfish donoughts, anyone? :-)... sounds a little weird, doesn't it?), while the Puertorican ones (that I ingested!) are flatter, more like pancackes. Also, Spaniards add parsley to theirs, while Puertoricans don't.

Still, both varieties are great.

If you want to make them from scratch, here is a Spanish recipe:

500 g (or 1 lb 2 oz) of salt cod
1 large potato, unpeeled
2 tablespoons milk
oil (best to use: olive) for deep frying
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
30 g (1/4 cup) self raising flour
2 eggs, separated
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh flat-leaf (Italian) parsley

Soak the cod in water for 24 hours, changing water regularly: at least 4 times.

Cook potato for 20 minutes or until soft. Cool, peel and mash with milk and 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

Drain the cod, cut into large pieces, place in a saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium and cook for about 10 minutes. Drain and cool. Remove skin and bones, then mash with fork until flaky.

Meanwhile heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan, add onion and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook for one minute. Remove from heat.

Combine the potato, cod, onion mixture, flour, egg yolk and parsley in a bowl and season.

Whisk egg whites until stiff then fold into the mixture.

Fill a large heavy-based one third full with oil and heat to 190 C (375 F).

Drop heaped tablespoons of the cod mixture into the oil and cook for 2 minutes or until puffed and golden. Drain on paper towels and serve immediately.

,in Puerto Rico you can make bacalaitos without going to all that trouble, since there are ready - or almost ready - mixes for them here and special frying pans for bacalaitos as well - see picture above.

They taste sooo good and apparently have less than 50 calories each, so you can indulge in two... or even three of them. :-)
Buen provecho!