I knew I wasn't going to get a lot of site seeing in but I wanted to do two things while here - go to Carcasonne and see some prehistoric caves. Carcasonneis a small village about 40 minutes from Toulouse by train. It's also the home to the largest castle in all of Europe (maybe the world). It cost us55 Euros (roughly $80) by train which I thought was bit steep. On arriving we talked to the tourist information and they gave us a map. We were doing just fineuntil we were approached by this little old blond haired French lady who spoke a mile a minute and was all too enthusiastic to show us her town. She didn't speak a lick of English and was doing her best to help us get to the castle but she couldn't see well enough to read our map and we couldn't hear well enough to get what she was saying. She'd rattle off stories about the history followed by a quick "Do you understand?" at which point a drop of drool wouldfall from our lips and the blank look on our faces would resume. Between Natalya and I we were able to discern that she was 71 years old, had livedin Carcasonne her whole life and has a daughter in Washington but we don't know which one. Oh and the daughter watches kids. She then got out her keys and insisted on us getting in her car at which point my red flag started flapping and we declined. I'm sure she was just fine but up until this point this was going to be a great story to tell and I thought it best to keep it that way. Last think I want is a newspaper headline announcing the finding of a couple of American tourists in a canal somewhere. The one thing she did tell us though is to traverse the esplanade and take the small rue to the left. This we did which was a great tip because it led us across a foot bridge in plain view of the castle. Maybe she did have good intentions.

Carcasonne itself is a fantasy castle built by the Cathars a long time ago. The Cathars were a group of people that thought Christianity shouldreturn to a simpler time. That and they believed in reincarnation - don't ask how that works...The Catholics declared the Cathars patrons of the Devil or something and decided to exterminate them and eventually succeeded. By the 1600s the castle had fallen into disrepair and the French border had moved south lessening the need for such a bastion. Later the village moved out of it and settled in the valley below. Now it's been restored and the village inside the walls is filled with restaurants and shops. It's actually quite nice and not crazy like Mount st. Michael. The sheer size of it is impressive. The Moors (Muslims) holed up in it when resisting against French troops which is a great story in the area. It's interesting to hear about the Muslims as being the good guys and the Christians as the aggressors. Quite the change of characters.

We ate at the only open restaurant in the town (It was Sunday) and decided to try the other local specialty - Cassoulet. Cassoulet is a heavy white bean, sausage and duck parts dish cooked in a clay pot. I think it would grow on you but is definitely not something one would call fine food. Natalya was not impressed.

There's a restaurant in Kirkland WA called Cafe Veloce thats a pretty cool place with old Italian racing motorcycles placed sporadically around the restaurant and the walls plastered with racing memorabilia. It also serves some decent food including one not so Italian dish - BBQ Chicken Pasta. I skimmed over that menu item quite a few times without ordering it because I'm in an Italian restaurant and I'm pretty sure that Kansas City is nowhere near Rome so the idea of putting BBQ sauce on pasta makes little sense. However, one day I did my normal routine and asked the Waitress to just bring me her absolutely favorite thing on the menu and this is what showed up. She was spot on the money.  Considering that BBQ sauce is just tomato sauce with a little molasses added the Italians only missed it by that >< much. Had they thought a bit more about this (and a few other situations in the last 100 years, namely a couple of wars) they could have been on the winning team. 

I suppose a shout out should got to the Mexicans since most great foods in the world require ingredients originating from that area which gained global distribution soon after their illegal immigrant problems got really bad (1521).  If it were not for them the Italians would still be eating wheat porridge three times a day and tomatoes - the Italian Love Apples would still be unknown.

I'm not sure why people (myself included) are so against BBQ Chicken Pasta because we'll rip apart a BBQ Chicken Pizza and then when there's nothing left snort the crumbs with a straw to get our fix. I'm to the point that I don't eat pizza unless it has BBQ Chicken on it, why would I? Tomato sauce and pepperoni? Can you get more boring?

I don't have a recipe for BBQ Chicken Pasta even though it's a favorite in our house and I make it often just because I'm not happy with it yet.  For the most part you just swap out one starch - bread for another - pasta. However, I've found the sauce to be a much pickier thing with the pasta because there's so much more of it. You don't want a smokey/tart/hot or very sweet sauce with this dish which leaves me experimenting on it. I've come to the conclusion that excessive heat is out and so is the amount of vinegar that a lot of BBQ sauces have. I lean more to a honey BBQ sauce with the dominant flavor being tomatoes and a hint of molasses. As soon as I'm satisfied I'll be uploading the recipe. 

The other components are grilled chicken breasts, onions and sweet peppers grilled until caramelized and cilantro. I serve this with either a Penne or Farfalle noodle because both hold the sauce well. Four cups of sauce, two onions, two red bell peppers and 1 lb of chicken works well for 1 lb of pasta as a general rule.

Gallery:

This is what I get for going through old food photos. I was looking for a photo of Boniatillo - a dessert made with sweet potatoes. The further I dug the more I saw photos of dishes we used to make but  have embarrassingly forgotten.

BBQ Chicken Pasta is one of those dishes. I don't know why I stopped making it but I did. It's been long enough that nobody remembered eating it. While I was nearly finished with the sauce and had the noodles boiling Jade asked what the noodles were for and then in response to my pointing to the sauce he asked "They're going in there? That's weird". I'm not sure why it seemed weird, maybe because he already has the categories in his mind as to what's allowed or not. The way I look at it we eat BBQ Chicken pizza so why not replace the crust with another starch, in this case noodles.

So the pasta goes something like this. Combine a tomato flavored BBQ sauce with roasted red peppers, carmelized onions, chopped tomatoes and cilantro, add grilled chicken and toss over pasta. It's a very fresh vibrant dish that takes you a bit by surprise. The BBQ sauce you need to make because virtually everything in the store is going to either be too sweet, hot or smoky. Even a little bit of smoke will ruin this dish.

On first bite Jade gave me two thumbs up and Natalya said she really liked it too.

I was in Winco the other day in the Mexican foods aisle and while browsing the dried chile peppers I took a whiff of Ancho Negros. As the aroma from the Ancho Negros entered my nasal passage an odor molecule (or two) landed on a cilia and triggered a neuron which in turn sent an electrical signal to my brain. This had a cascading effect remniscant of toppling dominoes - licorice, plums, sweet chiles and maybe even a smokey sensation all entered my imagination together resulting in  one vision forming in my mind - Black Chili! I imagined there on the cold tile floor a Chili with a deep black color and a flavor to match. A mixture of black beans and dark red kidneys, Ancho Negros blackened to within an inch of their life, roasted red bell peppers, roasted garlic, roasted tomatoes and carmalized onions. Throw in the basis of a deep smoky BBQ sauce - molassis, cumin and tomato sauce and then simmer until melded. We could add ground beef but that seemed just wrong so I'd have to go with mesquite smoked brisket with a nice deep bark. All of this formed in the thought bubble over my head and I've been itching to putting it together.

Two days ago I smoked the brisket for two hours, wrapped it in foil and finished it in the oven. Yesterday I put dark red kidneys and black beans in to soak. Today I simmered them for 2 hrs, roasted the bell peppers and tomatoes under the broiler and roasted the Jalapenos, garlic and Ancho Negros on a cast iron comal. The onions were salted and carmalized in a dutch oven and the rest was built up from there. Three hours later I had what you see here - Black Chili.

The verdict? I think it has promise.

I often hear people talk about Le Terroir when used to denote the special characteristics that geography bestows upon particular varieties of wine, coffee and tea. People wanting to grow grapes in less idealistic locations (not France or Italy) dispute this claim. I'm here to say that I believe in Le Terroir - at least in part. Every year I make Blackberry Syrup and Blackberry jam. I have along the east and north sides of my house Blackberry bushes the size of trees. The bushes in the north produce amazing, knock it out of the park, rocket to the moon, get the big O, fabulous fruit that in turn makes the most amazing syrup you've ever had. Those of you who know me know that I love exclamation food and this syrup is all I've said it is. The most common response to a spoonful is Oh My God! Really, I get that more than anything.

The berries on the east side of the house produce roughly the same thing short a few explicatives. The syrup they produce is for the record still better than anything you'll ever get in a bottle from the store and that includes so called "gourmet" products. The reason that both syrups made from berries on the side and back are great is that I only pick the absolute ripest berries which are very low in pectin and very high in natural sugar. I combine these with a bit more cane sugar and a tad of water and then only boil them just long enough for the fruit to break down and give me their juice. In this case the longer you cook the fruit the more you break down the flavor. However, the two locations give me different qualities of fruit. Even the birds will pick the bushes in the back clean before moving to those in the side of the house. What's the difference? I don't know to be honest. The ones in the back are at the bottom of a slope so maybe they get more water, they're further from the street so maybe less pollution, they get sun all day instead of half day, they're let run wild as opposed to me having to hack away on the side bushes on occasion... It's my opinion though that my fireplace has something to do with it. I have a gas fireplace on the east side and the pilot light is on, that means it's burning gas which then exits the right side of the building. I wonder if there's just enough gas in the air that the plants aren't as healthy.. Plants are funny that way.

No matter, this syrup might as well be crack (and should be illegal). I've taken to making homemade ice cream every other night just so I have an excuse to put syrup on it. I have to confess that I've gone down to the fridge in the middle of the night just to get a spoonful of syrup by itself. ;-) This morning I got out my Waring Pro 300 Belgian Waffle maker (father's day present) and made perfectly light and crispy waffles using Carbon's Golden Malted waffle mix just like what you get at many popular business hotels. And of course, I drizzled them with Blackberry Syrup. This syrup resembles liquid rubies is so beautiful that you hardly want to eat it until you get a whiff then a taste and you're all done.

I'm off dinner duty tonight which means I'm on dessert duty. Most baked desserts take quite a while to make so I decided to drag out the fryer and make Gulab Jamun which is a popular North Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepali, Gujarati and Punjabi sweet dish made of a dough consisting mainly of milk solids (often including double cream and flour) in a sugar syrup flavored with cardamom seeds and rosewater or saffron.

You can get it in Indian restaurants but we've found the quality to be all over the place. Sometimes you get it cold and other times it's warm. Once they were very clearly frozen and when they warmed them up the insides were still cold - ew! Also like many desserts there is a huge markup on Gulab Jamun in restaurants, for the price of one Gulab Jamun with maybe 2 balls of dough you can make an entire dish of them with 80 at home and in under an hour.

The photo to the right is 3/4 of the batch we made because we are still experimenting with the proportions for our copper serving dish. We used 2c dried milk, 1c flour, about 2/3c milk and 1tsp baking soda for the dough. We'll be adjusting this down a bit because we ended up with an extra 10 that won't fit in the dish. The syrup is made with 3c sugar, 2.5c water (or less) and 2tsp cardamom powder. In the future I'll be experimenting with putting rosewater in it as well. This whole tray of Galub Jamun cost about $2.50.

In the U.S. desserts usually fall under the categories of cake, pie or ice cream. I'm sure there are desserts that don't belong in these categories but they're the exception, not the rule. This dessert is a breath of fresh air and not (that) bad for you either. At least it has something in it besides sugar that your body can use including Vitamin A. It may seem strange to use a vegetable for dessert but we do it all the time when we make Pumpkin Pie (or Sweet Potato pie in the south). And what better than to use a tuber that purees nicely and is already reasonably sweet.

Boniatillo is a Latin American dessert described as a Cuban tropical sweet potato pudding. The Cuban version uses the white fleshed Boniato sweet potato. This rendition uses the more commonly available Jewel or Beauregard Sweet Potato most often mislabeled as Yam in American grocery stores. It also infuses the sugar syrup with lemon, orange and cinnamon creating a nice fruity sweet sensation along with pleasant Sweet Potato overtones. To add richness butter and egg yolks are beaten into it then whipped egg whites are fluffed and folded with the pudding to give it body. A sprinkle of cinnamon and a little cream and you have a nice tropical dessert pudding.

 Link to the Recipe: Boniatillo

Now that the recipe module is operational again on my site I'm starting to upload my recipes when I get time. Tonight I added the Gulab Jamun recipe as well as the Boniatillo recipe. Both are desserts, the former Indian and the latter Cuban.

Both recipes are done for all practical purposes so I won't be changing them. Tonight I made ghee so tomorrow if I get time I will upload the "recipe" for that as well.

Boniatillo is a favorite dessert that we make out of sweet potatoes. It's really easy to make but because the potato needs to cook for about an hour you can't really have dessert in 5 minutes.

Sometimes things work out and other times you just empty the fridge into a pot and give the old dial a hearty twist. When it comes up to temp you serve it (in solitude). Tonight I looked through the pantry and realized I had nearly everything I needed to make Chili which would save me a trip to the store in the rain. I threw in one slab of hamburger (I fill 1 gallon freezer bags with a 1/2 inch thick square of hamburger and freeze it, they stack like sheets of plywood), two cans of whole tomatoes pulsed in the food processor, onions, bell peppers, tons of chile powder, cumin, coriander, garlic and so on. After having it simmer for an hour I gave it a sip and I was swept back to my childhood memories of navy green kitchen cabinets and brown shag carpet. You might not see the connection quite yet so I'm going to help you out a little (this one's a freebie but you can show your gratitude by sticking a thank-you note to the invoice of a 2010 Mustang GT and send it to the usual address). The thing that both the chili and the my childhood memories have in common is their lack of taste. Oooh! you say. Try and keep up, the clocks a ticking.  So it seems my chili powder had turned to chilly powder. After much deliberation I added another quarter of a cup - call it a stimulus package if you will as it yielded the expected results - everything pretty much stayed the same. The cans of tomatoes were 99c grocery outlet random brand which seemed to be getting most of their flavor from the water they were packed in. Remind me to send off a letter to random brand to beef up the tomato flavoring in their water. Long story short - simmering it longer only lessened the cleansing nature of drinking 8 glasses water a day and boiling the hell out of it only resulted in the same amount of hell taking up a smaller amount of space. We have a rule in our house that on certain days we eat monastery style. This means that if anyone opens their big mouth they find themselves without a place to sleep. This was one of those times.

Thankfully you can always count on the act of "breaking bread" to save the day. The term breaking bread always reminds me of that time in Paris where I thought I was smarter than the French and tried to buy two baguettes on Saturday so I could eat one on Sunday when my boulangerie was closed. Breaking bread is not entirely accurate as the bread was the one opening a can of whoopass on everything it was whacked against. Our bread had no cause to be broke as it was made of corn and fried nicely in a cast iron skillet heated until the lard (yes I said it - lard) in the bottom was smoking. Piper also broke bread in the form of bagel dough turned mini-loaves. Seems the bagel dough was very wet and difficult to work with (sounds like someone I used to know) so she stuffed it into mini dutch ovens and it cooked up nicely. Someone needs to remind her about greasing and flowering her mini-dutch ovens though as the bread and the vessle in which it was cooked were tighter than Sonny and Cher which could only be separated by using one very hard object and a great deal of energy. I'm still talking about the bread here - try to stay focused.

Overall things worked out as they always do. Tomorrow I will attempt to save the leftovers, no pun intended.