Egg salad

As you read this, I'm riding a train to Leukerbad, in the Western side of Switzerland, where I'll spend a couple of days skiing and hanging out at the beautiful thermal baths. In case you are wondering, no, I'm not always on vacation, as one of my friends said the other day. It's just a little weekend getaway, which will make the coldest days of the year easier to bear. I know it may sounds a little crazy to go to the mountains during the chilliest week of them all, but I'd rather be cold ina place where nbeing in cold weather is fun, rather than freezing my ass off by the lake, with the humidity killing me and making me shiver to bone.

Before leaving I didn't bothered going grocery shopping, so I had to get a little creative with my lunches. Egg salad sandwich sounded like a good idea - I hadn't had the stuff since I left the U.S. in April of '10 - so I improvised with what I had in the fridge. It turned out great, exactly what I had in mind: to make it low fat, I used yogurt instead of mayo, added some paprika for flavor and capers and for saltiness.

EGG SALAD:

1 hard boiled egg, minced
1 tablespoon of capers, minced
2 small pickles, minced
2 tablespoons minced onion
Salt and paprika, to taste
3 tablespoons of plain low fat yogurt (or more if you need it)

Mix all ingredients in a small bowl.

Open faced pulled pork sandwiches

I've been kind of lazy with my blog lately, but I have a good excuse. At least, I think it's a pretty good one. With my parents being here visiting from the U.S., we have dined out a lot, especially since it's venison season and most local restaurants serve all kinds of delicious dishes.

Also, I've just been out of town for the weekend. I went to... drumroll please... BERLIN! I had always wanted to go and, finally, I've made it there. It was amzing trip, although a short one. I'll tell you all about it in a different post, though, with pics and all that other fun stuff.

For now I'm just going to share a recipe with you, the first ever made with my brand new crockpot. You have to know that slowcookers are not popular in Europe. I know, I know. It sounds crazy, since they are so awesome and useful... still, you cannot find them anywhere. Most people don't know what they are. I missed mine so much, I started thinking about having my mom ship it to me from Florida. But then I found one on Amazon.it and forwarded the link to my sister asking her to give it to me as a birthday present. And the rest is history. I now have a crock pot and it came just in time for me to make some good slowcooked, fall recipes.

I decided to inaugurate it by making spicy pulled pork. It turned out great, and when I came home from work the house smelled delicious.

PULLED PORK
Adapted from http://www.skinnytaste.com

• 2.5 lb pork shoulder
• 6 cloves garlic cut into slivers
• cumin
• garlic powder
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 2-3 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce
• 2 bay leaves

Season pork with salt and pepper. In a medium sauté pan on medium-high heat, brown it for about 10 minutes. Allow to cool.

Using a sharp knife, cut small holes into meat and insert garlic slivers. Season with cumin and garlic powder all over.

Place chicken broth in the crockpot, add bay leaves and chipotles. Add pork in crock pot and cook on low for 8 hours. After 8 hours, shred meat using two forks and combine well with the juices that accumalated at the bottom. Adjust salt and cumin. Let it cook another 15-30 minutes.

An interlude: the fried herring experience

This is a story about how something truly incredible happened while I was in Stockholm: I said out loud "Wow, herring is good!!!". And I meant it. It wasn't one of those "Wow, I really love this sweater Aunt Mary," sort of things. I meant it. From the bottom of my stomach. It all begun on Saturday morning, as my friend the architect and I were strolling through the streets of Stockholm. Going to Stockholm and not eating herring, he said, was just plain crazy. Like going to Philadelphia and not eating a cheesesteak crazy? Yes. Like going Milano and not ordering risotto? Yes. You get the idea. He shamed me into thinking that had I not tried the damn herring my Stockholm experience would have been sort of flawed and meaningless. I cringed inside, but looked up what the best place for herring is in Stockholm. We were in luck. It's a small street side cart called Nystekt Strömming, which literally means 'freshly fried herring', an unassuming tin box located right after the bridge that connects Gamla Stan (the Old Town) to Sodermalm (the 'hip' part of town) right outside the Slossen metro station. I cringed even more because that was exactly where we were headed anyway, so my chances of escaping the dreaded herring were slim to none. "Weren't you a food writer? Aren't you supposed to like everything?" Sure I was a food writer for years. As for the liking everything part, there are very few things I don't like, herring being one of them, and since I worked in Florida I could always safely assume that herring would not show up on my plate unexpected. 

The thing is I don't hate herring just because. I wasn't being a 

child about it. I had tried herring before. Twice. And hated it both times. The first time was in 1991, while traveling with sled dogs a hundred kilometers north of the Arctic Circle in Finland. Everything was magical about that vacation. Everything except breakfast which was, you guessed, smoked herring. I was ten and I was horrified. 

The second time a few years later, around 2000 I would say, when my palate had greatly improved and so had my open mind-ness. That time I picked the wrong the place, so it was entirely my fault. I was in the outskirts of Milano, looking like a madwoman for a new desk lamp at Ikea. You can imagine the rest. They had one of those tasting stations where some lady from Southern Italy, dressed in a ridiculous Viking costume and sporting and even more ridiculous fake Swedish accent, was giving away bites of brown bread topped with fried herring , onion and dilled mustard. I was famished —I was 19, I was always famished— so I grabbed a bite, chewed on it and here I have to give credit to my mother who taught me some manners, I swallowed it. It was bad. It was gross. Everything about it was wrong. The bread was hard on the edges and soggy in the middle. The herring was chewy and fishy. Even the dilled mustard, which is one of my favorite dressings in the world, was... bland. How do you make bland mustard, I ask you? Maybe it was diluted. Maybe it was old. Still, it let all the fishy flavor of the herring shine through. At that moment, while holding my $9 lamp in one hand and with a disgusted look on my face, I swore herring off my list of things to try again forever. Or so I thought.

Saturday afternoon in 18 degree weather and a fast approaching sunset, I found myself at Nystekt, facing my archenemy, the herring. The place had no menu, just a list of six or seven different fried herring sandwiches, all written in Swedish, so we observed what locals were doing for a couple of minutes and, other than a guy ordering a giant herring burger, everyone else seemed to go for something called skaning, an open-face sandwich that didn't look too intimidating. At this point, I must confess, I still wasn't sure I was going to try it. But once I saw the sandwich and once I realized the sun had gone behind the building and I was freezing, i decided it was time to give herring another try. And I am so glad I did. That sandwich, that herring, were heavenly. The rye bread was toasted just right, not too hard nor to soggy, he herring itself was crisp fried and, well, not fishy at all. It tasted like freshly caught, well seasoned, flesh fried fish. The red onions, spicy mustard and abundant fresh dill on top gave the sandwich that extra kick, bringing it from being a good sandwich to an amazing one. So I have to thank Stockholm, and my friend the architect of course, for making me get over my irrational hatred for herring. Now, will I eat it at Ikea next time I'm looking for a couch? No freaking way. But next time I'm traveling through Scandinavia I'll definitely look for another herring sandwich.      

Tommy's famous "reuben" sandwich

Reuben sandwiches are one of those things I never knew existed growing up in Italy. First of all, most Italian sandwiches, panini, are commonly made with two or three ingredients, and generally none of them are mustards or sauces. Then there's also the fact that corned beef isn't readily available in Italy, which makes making reuben sandwiches kind of difficult.

So when I moved to the US in 2001 there were all these news sandwiches looking up at me from menus, sandwiches with names that I didn't recognize like club, French dip and, of course, Reuben. Who the hell was Reuben, I asked? No one knew. Apparently a man named Reuben Kulakofsky, a Lithuanian-born, Jewish grocer from Nebraska invented it as part of a group effort by members of Kulakofsky's weekly poker game on the1920s. One of the poker players, a man named Schimmel, owned a local hotel and put the sandwich on the hotel's restaurant menu, making it famous —first locally, later nationally. Of course, as with every good food-related myth, there's other versions of the story. Some others believe that the reuben's creator was Arnold Reuben, the German-Jewish owner of the now defunct Reuben's Delicatessen in New York, who would started making the sandwich around 1914. There's many other stories, of course, which I won't bore you with: the point is Reuben sandwiches have been around for about a century and they are a great way to get rid of left over corned beef.

Since we had a ton of corned beef leftover from our belated St. Paddy's celebration, Tommy decided to show me how a good Reuben sandwich is made, although because we are also trying to cook out of our pantry before we move to Europe, we made our sandwiches with —brace your selves— white bread. Which I know is almost sacrilegious, but that's what we had. And to be honest, buying a whole loaf of rye just to make two sandwiches would be crazy. And... I don't like rye. There. I said it. So on to the recipe, shall we?

"REUBEN" SANDWICHES

Makes two sandwiches

4 slices of your bread of choice
Butter
Corned beef
Thousand island dressing
4 tablespoons sauerkraut

Butter each bread slice on one side and toast under the broiler or in a panini press. In the mean time, warm up the sauerkraut in a small pan. When bread is lightly toasted and butter has melted, add corned beef, sauerkraut and drizzle with dressing. Cover with other slice of bread and press for a minute. Cut in half and enjoy.

Spicy tuna melts

I guess the biggest thing that hit me when I lost my job was the fact that one moment I was a writer and the next I wasn't one anymore. See, it wasn't the money or the humiliation —it was more the fact that for over three years I had defined myself by what I was doing, which was basically writing all day, everyday. And then, after a couple of days, it hit me.

I still am a writer.

I write this blog. I'm writing a novel. And, soon, I'll be writing for other publications. So I really didn't need my job to define who I am. It may seem obvious to most, but to me it wasn't until I started thinking about the possibilities that lay before me. I can now do and be whatever I want. I can travel. I can work for multiple organizations and publications. I don't have to sit in an office for a pre-set amount of hours each week. I can decide to make my own mayo to make tuna melts for lunch which, so far, is the only thing I've done in my new and improved life. But hey, one has to start somewhere, right?

SPICY TUNA MELTS

Serves 2

2 English muffins, cut in half and toasted
1 can tuna
1/2 cup of mayo
2 tablespoons capers
1/2 onion, minced
1 jalapeno, minced
Salt and pepper
1 tomato, sliced
4 slices of your favorite cheese

Mix tuna, mayo, capers, onion and jalapeno, and season with salt and pepper.
Divide mixture evenly over the four muffin halves, top with a slice of tomato, season with salt and pepper and top with cheese.
Place under the broiler for 3 or 4 minutes, until cheese is bubbly.

Chipotle BBQ sandwiches

I don't know about you, but every once in a while I crave the smoky taste of a good barbecue sandwich. Yesterday was one of those days. I was pretty busy -work, teeth cleaning at the dentist, a much needed hair cut- so I didn't get home until almost 9 o'clock. I needed something simple and quick to make. Plus, my local supermarket was offering boneless, skinless chicken breasts at $1.99 a pound... how could I resist the urge to stock up on it? I couldn't, so I stocked up. I also had some potato buns leftover from Sunday's cookout and some red cabbage that -yes, you guessed it- was given to me by the co-op guys. So I made an Iron Chef night out of it and put together these sweet and spicy chicken sandwiches and some spicy slaw (recipe to follow, hopefully today, if not tomorrow.) The chicken, thanks to a kick ass technique learned from Cooking Light magazine, tastes like it has been slow cooked for hours but only needs to be cook for about 15 minutes. Now THAT is what I need when I'm tired and hungry and it's 9 o'clock at night. Don't let the lenght of the recipe fool you -it's easy.

CHIPOTLE BBQ SANDWICHES
Adapted from Cooking Light
Makes 4 sandwiches:

1 teaspoon ground cumin
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 pound skinless, boneless chicken breast
3 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce
Canola oil
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 cup tomato puree
1/4 cup cider vinegar
3 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
Salt and pepper
4 sandwich rolls ( I love Martin's Potato Rolls)

Pour a quarter inch of water in a large skillet. Add 1 teaspoon cumin, 4 sliced garlic cloves, and chicken (seasoned with salt and pepper to taste), cover and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and cook 10 minutes. Drain, discard water and cut chicken across grain into thin slices. Set aside.

Remove 2 tablespoons adobo sauce from can of chiles and set aside. Remove 3 chipotle chiles from can and finely chop and set aside. Whatever chiles and sauce you don't use, store in a tapperware in the fridge, they last forever.

Heat a little bit of oil in the same skillet skillet. Add 1 tablespoon minced garlic and sauté 3 minutes or until just beginning to brown -be careful not to burn it! Add cumin, stir in tomato puree, 2 tablespoons adobo sauce, 3 chopped chipotle chiles, vinegar, honey, Worcestershire, and salt. Add sliced chicken to sauce; simmer for 3 minutes or until thoroughly heated.

In the meantime, preheat broiler.

Split rolls in half and broil 1 minute or until lightly toasted. Divide chicken mixture evenly among bottom halves of rolls and serve immediately.

Bánh mì

As it often happens with my favorite foods, bánh mì isn't readily available where I live. It's not that I'm crazy picky, it has more to do with the fact that Naples is a pretty mainstream town where ethnic options aren't always plentiful and exciting.
If you ask me, the bánh mì -a Vietnamese sandwich of crunchy baguette, rich pate', spicy pork and refreshing veggies- is possibly one of the best sandwiches in the world, along with the Cuban, the Italian prosciutto di Parma with fresh mozzarella and tomatoes and grilled ham and cheese. After reading a couple of articles about it in cooking magazines such as Cooking Light and Bon Appetit I decided to take the matter in my hands and make it home. It was a hit and it's fairly simple to make once you buy a couple of ingredients from your local Asian market.

BANH MI
Makes 4 sandwiches

1/2 cup grated carrot
1/2 cup grated peeled daikon radish
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
2 teaspoons brown sugar
Salt
4 tablespoons chili garlic sauce
1 1/2 teaspoons brown sugar
1 1/2 pound pork tenderloin
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 baguettes
Thin cucumber slices
Fresh cilantro sprigs
2 thinly sliced green onions
1 thinly sliced jalapeño pepper

Combine carrot, radish, vinegar, brown sugar and salt to taste, cover and let stand at least 15 minutes. Drain.

Preheat oven to 400°. Mix chili garlic sauce and 1 1/2 teaspoons sugar, stir well. Sprinkle the pork with 1/2 teaspoon salt and baste with 2 tablespoons of the chili garlic sauce mixture. Bake at 400° for 20 minutes. Cool and refrigerate.

Combine mayonnaise and remaining chili garlic sauce mixture.

Cut each baguette horizontally, cutting to, but not through, the other side. Spread mayonnaise mixture inside baguettes. Thinly slice pork; divide pork between baguettes. Top with carrot mixture. Arrange cucumber slices and cilantro sprigs on each baguette. Top with onions and jalapeño. Press top gently to close; cut each baguette into 4 equal servings and press in panini press if desired.