Traditional Arancine

I did a proper research on how to make these bad boys.  After countless cook books, blogs, online recipes, videos and my father's stories, I decided to give them a go and I succeeded.  Yes, pat on the back, Maria, pat on the back.  I just should've been more generous with the filling as it can be seen from the photographs..

 Not that I don't usually do such copious amount of research before I make something for Happy Belly *cough*.  Anyway.  These little golden crispy rice balls are amazing. They're Sicilian and in Palermo they're female (arancin-a) while in Catania they're male (arancin-o).  I thought I'd make them female as a dedication to my former Palermian colleagues in Berlin (Cate & Fede).  I remember they invited me for an arancina party and Fede had enough to feed a village.

Orange Cantucci

 Pastries, desserts, cookies and other baked goods can often go wrong.  Sometimes there are variables beyond our control or simply not considered by us - the temperature of the room, the conditions of the oven, the egg size etc.  My mother's never been good at the sweets department, but for her, the reason was obvious, she always f*cking halved the amount of sugar.  My Chinese mother didn't grow up in the kitchen watching her mother bake.  In her time, Chinese sweets were bought, no one made desserts at home.  And Chinese people aren't too into sweets in the first place - they're just sort of left with a hole at the end of a big meal.  Nothing to really...finish up the palate....

Olive Oil Crumbly Biscuits

"You need better-looking cookie cutters" My mom said as I pulled the tray out of the oven.  Here in our house in Italy I only have a set of poker suit cookie cutters.  I thought they were cute, but my mother likes classic cookie shapes.  She also likes classic flavor combinations and classic recipes, and laments every time I do something slightly different.  "I hope they teach you this at culinary school, what foods shouldn't go with what. You do all these crazy things and you'll make your guests sick one day in your restaurant"  She said, after I explained the concept of surf and turf to her.  And I did the usual eye-rolling, forehead-banging-rhythmically-on-the-table routine as she droned on about what her Chinese medicine books say.

Salt-Baked Fish

This may seem barbaric to you, but when I was small I loved eating fish eyeballs. My Chinese grandmother would encourage me to eat it, and little me would just pick out the eyes with my chopsticks and suck on that gelatinous blob with great satisfaction and spit out the white iris or whatever it was. I also ate chicken feet – gnawed on those things like chicken wings. Again, because of the Chinese grandmother. Now I cringe at the thought of eating either. This dish brings back these memories for in China you would always serve the fish whole. In the West if you order a salt-baked fish for instance, the waiter would show you the fish whole. then take it to the side, fillet it and serve it to you. That’s the standard procedure. However, the other evening I went to a dreadful restaurant in Rome, which I will not name because I’m nice, and the waiter just left me with the big platter of salt baked fish. He came, showed it to me, I looked at the waiter, giving him my sign of approval – “Yes it’s beautiful, you may fillet it for me” my eyes said. Yet he just put it in front of me and left. I was puzzled and embarrassed, I didn’t know what I was supposed to do with it. So I was there with my fish knife and my fork and I gently tapped the crust and nothing happened. Then I tapped with some force and coarse sea salt went everywhere. Obviously I’m inept, Sir, especially with this stupid fish knife, my eyes said, as the waiter shot a judgmental glance at me. Then he asked if I’d like him to fillet it and I said yes please and he did. At the end it was a good piece of fish, it’s hard to mess up salt-baked fish. However, the restaurant overall was just meh.

Octopus with Gazpacho, Mozzarella & Green Beans

My father says that my grandfather used to catch his own octopuses (/octopi?) and would bite down on them and beat the life out of them with a hammer before cooking them.  This was supposed to tenderize the meat.  Now I got my octopus from the market, I kind of gently tapped it a few times with a meat tenderizer..and it was okay.  Admittedly it could have been more tender.....next time but I felt awkward exerting that much force and anger onto a poor octopus. 

Do you know how octopuses mate?  The male octopus inserts one arm into the female's head. Sometimes the arm just detaches, so the male essentially gives the female his arm until she is ready to fertilize the legs.   I saw this on QI heehee.

Anyway, back to the consumption of octopuses ---  so how do you cook an octopus.  The guides here and here are quite helpful.  Most recipes call for you to poach it in some sort of homemade stock with aromatics but I just poached it in water.