FROM SEA TO TABLE: SUSHI

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Have I made those?  No, I’ve never made sushi myself, and I doubt that I’ll ever attempt it. But, we love sushi, and it would  be crazy not to enjoy it here, in this Hawaiian paradise. Yes, we are in Hawaii,  the North Shore of Oahu… We love this place so much! With all due respect to Honolulu and Waikiki, nothing beats the aura of the North Shore. No shopping centers, no fancy restaurants, no  movie theaters, just the ocean, the white sandy beaches, the waves that can catch you by surprise and throw you around like a puppet… And the seafood, as fresh as you can dream it!

We had dinner at a small sushi place in  Hale’iwa, called Banzai Sushi Bar. Clockwise from top left you see a Bowl’s Roll (a California roll topped with shrimp and avocado), a Hawaiian roll (coconut shrimp in the center, macadamia nuts, mango and eel sauce on top), Bowls roll revisited, and the ahi tuna sashimi.

We are lucky enough to be very close to what we are told is “one of the best kept secrets in the North Shore”: a beach with no obvious entrance from the road. Apparently only folks living here know about it. From a bike path, you can see a small dirt path, that seems to lead nowhere…. But as you approach the end, big surprise…. a beach, almost deserted, particularly considering these pictures were taken on a Saturday morning!

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I share with you a few photos, they can all be enlarged by clicking on them.

(clique e amplie!)

Look to your left….

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Look to your right….

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Look ahead into the ocean….

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Some shots around a nice running route…

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ALOHA!

Leaving on a jet plane…

Tomorrow we jump on a plane….

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and should be right around this spot 9 long hours later….

Agenda for the next 10 days: relax and enjoy life!

(stay tuned, as the Bewitching Kitchen is always open… 😉

AVOCADO THREE WAYS

This post is a courtesy of my husband…

I think you will all agree that he is a natural-blogger! 😉


We have little time to cook, but we’re always seeking something wonderful. Avocados meet us in the middle. Especially the rich, creamy Hass and Calavo avocados, from California and Mexico. Here are three quick and easy ways to enjoy them!

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1.  Avocado Appetizer. Hungry for something delicious and healthy? My aunt Millie showed me this one.  If the avocado’s just right, then it’s hard to top.

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Acquire a perfectly ripe avocado.  How can you tell?  Squeeze the avocado…it should be very firm but not hard, soft enough so that it yields to moderate pressure. Knock out the stem-plug and look for a green (not brown!) core.

Slice the avocado in half,
douse it with lemon juice,
sprinkle it with salt and pepper,
enjoy the solar energy!

2. Green Caprese Salad.

This is my Americanized  rip-off of the continental classic.

Assemble the following (fresh) ingredients:
tomatoes,
mozarella
avocados
basil
1/4 cup olive oil

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Cut the the tomatoes, cheese and avocados into slices or chunks; shred or chiffonade the basil and let it sit in the oil for 5 or 10 minutes.

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Assemble the components on a salad plate and drizzle-spread the basil-oil mixture over them, using a fork to help distribute the basil.  Season with salt and pepper, VOILA!

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3.  Gabriel’s Guacamole. Once while returning, exhausted, from a day of skiing at Los Alamos, we stumbled into Gabriel’s restaurant north of Santa Fe, and encountered the best guacamole we’ve ever tasted.  And the beautiful thing was that our waiter prepared it right in front of us, at our table.  I couldn’t help but remember the EIGHT components, that he added according to our specifications:

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garlic
lemon juice
cilantro
serrano peppers
salt
tomatoes
avocados

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It’s a little time consuming to prepare all the ingredients, but worth the effort.  Note that I’ve pressed a garlic clove into a couple of tablespoons of  olive oil: use just the oil for a milder garlic flavor, or throw it all in for garlic lovers.  We also discovered, on a day when the avocados ran short, that the other components together make an outstanding fresh salsa!

now for the fun part….

Continue reading

Farmer’s Market

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Life is good!

THE HANDMADE LOAF

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Like a Mother who adamantly refuses to name her favorite child, I have a hard time picking a favorite cookbook. But, if someone asked me which cookbook had the greatest impact on my cooking,  I’d pick “The Handmade Loaf” by Dan Lepard, hands down.

If you dream of making great bread, if you feel that calling those preserved abnormalities at the grocery store “bread” is disrespectful to bakers everywhere, then you need this book.   Not only are the photos  gorgeous, but Dan’s writing will excite you to try every single bread from the book.  Isn’t that the mark of a great cookbook? Each page you turn makes you want to stop reading and start cooking! 😉

His main message is simple: if you want to become great at baking bread, forget about using a bread machine, or even a mixer. You won’t be pushing buttons, you will be using your hands to knead the dough. But his kneading technique is miles and miles ahead of the traditional, back-breaking, sweat-inducing method. You’ll fold the dough instead,  allowing time to accomplish what brute force used to do. You will also, for the most part, use yeast captured from your own kitchen, starting from flour, water, and a few raisins.  This book will completely change your approach to bread baking.

Yes, you will make the sourdough starter. Yes, at first you will feel intimidated. Yes, you will make mistakes, but you’ll soon realize that the starter is a very forgiving creature. Some of you who read my profile might be mumbling: “yeah, right, she is a biochemist who works with bacteria, easy for her to make starter”.  Believe me, I felt intimidated too.  I was afraid of the sourdough turning rotten, of my breads not rising, tasting flat, ending up hard as a hockey puck. In part because those things happened to me in the past, I was convinced that bread baking was simply not my cup of tea.

That all changed with “The Handmade Loaf”.  My first starter was born on March 2008 (I now have more than one). Since then, I’ve baked sourdough bread on a regular schedule, by far the MOST rewarding activity in my Bewitching Kitchen. I will share many of my bread baking adventures here, so stay tuned. 😉

Meanwhile, would anyone care for a piece of levain bread with black olives?
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