Well, I really hate the stairs here. They make me climb up five flights! I have tiny legs! Sometimes I get carried. Sometimes.
Other than that, I have been trying to make friends with the cats. They do not like me. I do not really like them. Progress is slow. There is a pug named Elsa who lives three doors down. She’s good.
I like going to pubs and riding on the Tube. One time at the pub, I tricked a small human into feeding me all her crisps.
I have a pink chair at home which I have decorated with pug hair.
We’ve been in our flat for just over three weeks now. All is going well, except for my war with our landlords (it’s not that interesting of a war, but if anyone cares for a play-by-play, text me, I am happy to oblige).
Our Building.
View from the balcony.
Notting Hill is quite “posh.” It is probably a lot like living in Pac Heights, but a little hipper. There are antique markets about every other day, where you can buy all kinds of treasures. The neighborhood is full of boutiques, pubs, and a fabulous market/restaurant/home goods store, Daylesford, that is supplied entirely with food from its own farm.
There are a lot of families in the neighborhood, so lots of school kids dressed in their little uniforms with straw hats, which is adorable. Here’s an idea of what the neighborhood looks like.
Kids in cute uniforms.
And we are really close to Hyde Park (below), and Holland Park. Both beautiful.
Victoria and Kensington Palace.
Another fun neighborhood feature is the luxury cars parked on the street. I get a lot of amusement out of the person who purchases an Aston Martin — like the one below which lives outside our flat — but not a parking space.
Favorite thing about the neighborhood so far – the kitties! There are so many! I love seeing them roaming around. I have one special cat friend who lives across the street. He likes to sit in a pot, and when he has time, chase squirrels.
Favorite.
Cats refuse to be photogenic.
Not happy with Dan.
Favorite. Managing garbage day.
We are settling in nicely. Dan got hooked-up with a great incubator, so is going to the office everyday. I’m rowing with a really fun group of women, working on finishing up my horticulture classes, and doing a lot of cooking for us. Plus managing my herb garden and geranium collection. Important job.
Alice has discovered she prefers napping in the comfy pink chair in our bedroom above all other spots, and that she would like to be carried up the five flights of stairs to our flat.
London in the summer is full of fun. On Tuesday night, we went to A Midsummer Night’s Dream in our garden. There were probably 150 people in attendance for the outdoor performance. It was such a nice event to attend. We got lucky to get in, as tickets were sold out, and we thought we would have to watch through our bedroom window.
We’ve got a busy couple weeks coming up that I’m really excited for. Wimbledon gets going on Monday — finally time for strawberries and cream, and Pimms! Next weekend is Royal Henley, which I need a fancy hat for. I’m headed to Paris for a few days of adventure with Dr. CJ. Dan’s mom is coming to visit. And then . . . I’m racing in a 4+ at Masters Henley! I’m so excited about racing on such a renowned course. Can hardly contain myself.
Florence is really interesting for all its history and art, but as Vicki Hallett put it in her great travel piece on Modena, Florence “is basically an American college campus covered in Renaissance art.” It’s not only filled with college students, but tourists, and it’s hard to escape the crowds. So I wanted to write a little bit about the neighborhood we stayed in, Oltrarno, because we really enjoyed it. Just far enough out of the crazy, but not too far to make it inconvenient.
The heart of Oltrarno is Piazza Santo Spirito. A small piazza with a fountain in the center. The Piazza has been around since the 1200s. The church, Santo Spirito, was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi (the guy who built the Duomo) and completed in the late 1400s.
The Piazza has a daily market with rotating vendors and is surrounded by restaurants, coffee shops, and bars. It was approximately a 2 minutes walk from our apartment, so we got to know it.
Each morning we took Alice to the Piazza for an espresso. We slowly woke-up with the neighborhood this way. As we drank our cappuccinos, vendors would start to trickle into the Piazza to set up their tables and stalls for the day. We came to recognize a few locals at the coffee shop — an older woman who loves Alice and feeding the birds, another woman, who also loves to feed the birds and has a white mini-poodle named Aukie. The birds are basically pets in this Piazza. We also saw the municipal street cleaners every morning at the coffee shop. It was really nice to see, and attempt to speak to, these familiar faces everyday. Alice gets all the credit for anyone even trying to speak to us.
They think I have the breadcrumbs.
Commiserating over the lack of bread crumbs.
Scenes from the market.
We also loved our apartment. With the exception of the neighbors upstairs who occasionally seemed to be dragging large pieces of furniture across their floor, and two very grumpy women with a grumpy dog, it was perfect. When you walk into the apartment there is a huge living space with tiled floors laid in a herringbone pattern. There are three large shuttered windows in the main room. The ceiling is probably 15 ft high, and the natural light is beautiful. As you move into the apartment the dinning room is in front of you, and the kitchen on the left. The two spacious bedrooms come next. My mom’s bedroom had a wall painted the color of an apricot, which made the room look sunny at all times. Her room has doors that lead out to a balcony overlooking a courtyard. Our room has its own bathroom complete with a shower head in the middle of the ceiling! Very convenient. If the grumpy ladies and their dog do not bother you and you need a place to stay in Florence, we’d be happy to pass on the info.
Oltrarno has great food – gelato, pizza, pasta, bistecca fiorentina, etc. – is not entirely overrun by tourists, and is close enough to all the main attractions. Would highly recommend if you’re headed to Florence and don’t want to feel like you are in the middle of a stampede or running of the bulls at all times.
Delicious $8.50 2L bottle of wine!
Bfast for most Italians.
I was obsessed with this carrot cake from the local bakery.
Back to blogging that is. Not the U.S. We’ve had a busy last couple of weeks leaving Italia, getting Alice past UK boarder security, recovering from colds, waking up at 2:00 a.m. to watch the Warriors, and settling into our London flat, so the blog has been on the back burner.
I’ve got at least one post about Italia that I will put up later this week, and I’m sure I’ll have lots to write about London, but for now, here is the story about our journey to the UK and where we spent our first couple of days here.
Arrivederchi, Firenze, hand-made pasta, and gelato . . .
We left Florence on the last day of May. Because I am paranoid about missing flights, we left our apartment at 4:15 a.m. for a 6:30 a.m. flight. Needless to say, we arrived at the airport a solid two hours before takeoff, which made one of the three of us (me) happy. Flew to Charles de Gaulle where we were picked up by a car service, driven to Calais, and then through the Channel Tunnel to England. Why not fly directly to Heathrow, you might ask? Well, where would the fun be in that?! But actually, despite the fun, it is because the UK does not allow you to fly into it with a pet in the cabin. Pets can be in the hold, but not the cabin. No one has explained why this makes sense. So we got the opportunity to drive through the beautiful French country-side for three hours.
All went smoothly until we arrived at “Pet Reception” in Calais, where they told us Alice needed to go to a French vet and get a new passport because, although she was cleared to cross the boarder, a date on her Spanish passport was not written properly . . . . So, we drove to a French vet where the receptionist filled out a new passport — the vet played no role — in exchange for 50 euros cash. This apparently happens with so much frequency that there are a ridiculous number of vets within 10 minutes of the Tunnel to accommodate filling out new paperwork that no one will every look at again. Bright side – Alice has TWO passports now. Thinking of getting her a UK passport in the likely event of a no-deal Brexit.
After that, and a grilling from UK boarder security — she was not convinced we are going to leave in the appropriate amount of time, but we promised we would not use any free health care and she let us by — we were on our way.
And the UK portion of our European Tour began!
We spent four days in Folkestone, a little beach town in southern England, while we waited for our apartment in London to be ready. I loved it. Too sleepy for Dan.
Folkestone feels like the place they would have gone in Downton Abbey to get away from the stress of running a country estate. Our hotel sat back from a cliff overlooking the English Channel. A lovely promenade called The Leas runs all along the cliff. As you walk towards town on The Leas, the sea is on the right, Victorian homes, hotels, and large green lawns are on the left. The cliffside is a maze of paths and stairs that lead down to the ocean. At the base of the cliff are colorfully painted beach huts, and a miles-long red-pebble beach.
View from The Leas.
According to some signs I read, King Edward VII (Queen Victoria’s son) spent a lot of time in Folkestone at the fancy hotel, The Grand, with his mistress, Alice Keppel. We stayed next to The Grand in The Burlington, which was built in the 1890s, and is very charming.
View looking back at our hotel from The Grand dinning room.
The Grand from our hotel.
The Grand in the background.
All along The Leas, red poppies — the symbol of remembrance for those who fought in WWI — made of yarn are tied to the railings.
The homes are beautiful, the gardens are beautiful, and it reminds me a lot of the San Juan Islands. Probably why I like it so much. Some views from around town and the small harbor.
Cliffs of Dover blocked by railing.
This spring has been unseasonably cold in Europe, and the trend is continuing into early summer. We’ve got our fingers crossed things warm up soon. It was in the low 60’s for most of our time in Folkestone. As a result we didn’t get an idea of how this places looks in the summer, but I imagine by the number of beach huts, that it is full of action and fun.
We left Italy a few days ago, and Alice wants to be sure you know how much she loves it there. After watching Under the Tuscan Sun, she is already insisting on returning and buying a villa in Cortona. Getting her to the UK was another story, that I’m sure she will want to share with her readers soon.
LOVE Italia. Am starting to speak a little Italian. I know the words “bella”, “ciao”, and “gelato”. I, of course, get a lot of “bella” and “ciao, bella!”
I like the coffee shop we go to because the customers understand that I am underfed, and give me pieces of their cornettos every morning.
I get to lick the gelato containers clean. Then my face smells like gelato, which is nice. My favorite flavor is all of them.
I eat out at all the restaurants. But one time, at a bar, I got in trouble for putting my face on the table and taking a nap. I never returned to that establishment! Another time, the man cutting the ham also understood that I am underfed, and kindly gave me a piece of delicious prosciutto.
My human grandma came to see me, and took me on lots of walks and let me lick all the dinner plates clean. A practice human parents should take note of, please!
Italia is my favorite place in the whole world.
-Alice
Here are a few photos Alice wanted to include with her post. The three below are at her cafe, where she would literally sprint every morning with or without us.
“My Italian bff.”
“What the heck, this door is always open!”
“My second Italian bff.”
Alice’s sightseeing tour of Rome. She liked the Trevi Fountain the best.
“It’s hot here.”
“I’m bored.”
Wine touring in Tuscany.
“Me in an old cave.”
“Prosciutto friend.”
There was this one incident . . . all was forgiven after we gave her a gelato container peace offering.
All alone in the kitchen this week without my mom. A little lonely at first, but dessert day helped me pull through.
Day 11 – Desserts
We started off making biscotti and a vegan cookie. We used the biscotti to make a biscotti-flavored bavarian. The bavarian was really complicated, and included what can best be described as a wine jello shot in the middle. Then we made sebadas, a dessert from Sardinia, which is sort of like an Italian quesadilla, with honey on top. Really good.
Below are the sebadas. They have pecorino cheese inside. Yum.
Bavarian didn’t have enough time to set. Imagine it prettier. The filling is an Italian sweet wine – vin santo!
Day 12 – Sauces
We made about 5 different sauces today. The best part was that Marcella had me make two different tomato sauces anyway I wanted, and then we just watched what happened. I made one spicy sauce, and one without spice, each sauce using a different technique.
The spicy sauce got started with hot oil, and was not put through a food mill. The other sauce was started in cold oil, and then put through a mill.
Before and afters. Spicy sauce shown above, non-spicy below.
The main difference between the two sauces was heating the oil or not – heating the oil first leaves an oilier residue (in a good way), whereas starting the sauce cold causes the oil to be absorbed by the ingredients and the finished product looks a little more watery as opposed to oily. Here are the sauces with pasta, spicy (hot oil) on the left.
Other sauces and dips made today.
Day 13 – Low Cooking with Game Meat
Marcella got us some fresh Tuscan hare and wild boar today. We made stew and pate with the boar, and braised the hare. We also made some pork confit. The hare was really tough and gamey, the boar and pork were delicious.
Hare with blackberry sauce and chestnut “polenta”.
Day 14 – Offals . . .
Made lots of strange stuff today, but I’ll say this, actually preparing the strange stuff makes it a lot easier to eat and it all tasted just fine. I probably won’t make any of it ever again, but it was tasty! We also made pan brioche, which was delicious.
Fat web.
Liver wrapped in fat web.
Brioche.
Sweetbreads and artichokes getting ready for frying.
Tripe for stew.
Some of the finished products. Dish with strawberries on top is chicken liver pate.
Day 15 – Gelato!
Last day of cooking school . . . I’m really sad to see it end. But I definitely didn’t tear up or anything (I did).
Gelato! A perfect topic to end on. We made seven gelatos with different bases and flavors. They break down into a few different categories by the base: 1) milk base; 2) milk/egg base; and 3) water/sugar base (sorbets).
We made two milk-based flavors – fiore di latte (just plain milk and a little vanilla) and a savory flavor, parmesan cheese. Three milk/egg bases – crema, basil, and chocolate. Basil was really good. Wasn’t expecting it. Finally, we may two sorbets – lemon/strawberry, and rose. The rose was amazing. I’m usually not one for flower-flavored foods, but the rose is a winner. And both sorbets were really creamy! You would not have thought they were sorbets. The trick to the creaminess is folding Italian meringue into the base part-way through the freezing process.
Meringue getting added to the strawberry.
Rose! The best. But I didn’t freeze it quite long enough . . .
Clockwise from top left – chocolate, strawberry, parm, fiore di latte, basil, crema.
If anyone is in Florence and is looking for a cooking class, I highly recommend Giglio. Marcella and her team are awesome. She can teach you any traditional Italian dish, or really just anything (but I think the Italian dishes are most fun!). And for those who are not unemployed and traveling, you can sign up for half-day classes.
So glad I had this experience, and I now have a lot of cooking gadgets to purchase when we return to SF, including a pasta roller and gelato maker.
Very. According to my Apple watch, I am about 3x more active now than I was at home. Dan likes to go to gyms when he can find them, I like to go for long walks and short runs. We walk a ton in general, and I’ve got the blisters to prove it.
How is traveling with an older pug?
-Alex C.
Reject the premise. Alice is 12 years young. Traveling with Alice is wonderful. She makes friends everywhere she goes, which makes us proud pug parents.
What is European pet etiquette?
-Alex C.
Depends on where you are. In France, dogs go basically everywhere, except for most parks, annoyingly, and museums. And they generally are not allowed in the bigger retailers or grocery stores, but they are welcome in pretty much any restaurant or cafe. And not just outside, your pup can dine inside with you.
Portugal was not very pet friendly. Dogs really aren’t allowed anywhere except outdoor spaces. People do seem to really like dogs, they just can’t go anywhere with you.
Florence is by far the best place to travel with your dog. Alice goes literally everywhere. Dogs are even allowed in the grocery store! They ride in special carts. The other day, two dogs were in their little carts and were being wheeled towards each other and it almost got ugly! I am so so disappointed I did not get video footage of the dog fight near the meat department.
Alice in a bar. Scusami, you forgot my Spritz!
Florence and Paris are both more dog friendly that SF, Lisbon is less. Vets everywhere have been great.
How did you pack for the trip?
Alex C.
It starts with the bag.Dan wanted a bag he could carry on his back so he could walk around with both hands free. He got a 120L Eagle Creek duffle with wheels that he is very proud of. I have two bags, a 90L Patagonia black hole bag, which is much cuter than the Eagle Creek bag but does not have wheels, and my Briggs and Riley carry on. I brought two bags because I didn’t think I could carry a 120L bag on my back very easily but couldn’t fit everything in the 90L, and because I like my two bags. I don’t travel hands free, but I can put the duffle on my back, or roll it around on top of my carry-on. We each have about two weeks worth of clothes, so we do laundry about that often.
In terms of the clothes themselves, I brought my favorite items from home and also went to Banana Republic and bought some basic stuff that I won’t mind tossing as we travel. Dan just crammed as much stuff as he could into the big bag.
All our stuff.
Are you buying souvenirs?
-Alex C.
No.
Are you learning new languages?
-Alex C.
Oui! (No).
Any major disasters so far?
-Alex C.
We had one snafu in Lisbon. The apartment we booked was a fraudulent listing, and we spent an annoying amount of time trying to work that out with customer support. But, we ended up in a much nice place in a much nicer neighborhood. And the good thing about things going wrong when you are jobless is that whatever it is that has gone wrong, is far less stressful to deal with than when you had a job! It’s amazing.
How are you managing the low level anxiety of being unemployed and traveling?
-Alex C.
There is no anxiety. Hardest part was getting out the door.
For Dan, what is the secret project you have been working on?
-Alex C.
Sports writing. Plus some other stuff he’ll tell you about later.
Where do you do your Pulitzer worthy blogging? On the train? In the morning? Will Alice ever get a byline?
– Katie S.
Most of the Pulitzer worthy stuff happens in our apartments or cafes. I usually write in the morning because sometimes in the afternoon I need naps. Alice has Pug Corner, and she doesn’t need any more credit for having me translate her screams into words.
Here is how Alice’s blogging goes.
What is your favorite city so far?
-Katie S.
Paris.
How do you make those clever maps with the escargot on them?
– Anonymous
Great question, Anonymous. We have to keep some secrets secret. But I’ll say this, it’s a time-consuming art.
This week, Dan wanted to know which one of us was going to get voted out of cooking class (he gets Giglio Cooking School and TopChef mixed up). We asked Marcella and she said we could both stay, but threatened to kick me out if I burn the garlic.
Day 6 – More Pasta
Today we made four kinds of pastas with different ingredients in them to give us a better idea of how gluten forms, and how different ingredients effect the elasticity of the dough.
Here are the different pastas. On the left is buckwheat. On the right, there is soy lecithin (squares), then moving clockwise, bean pasta, hazelnut pasta, and regular pasta we made a few days ago.
Importantly, Marcella said that we had the most success of anyone she has had in class in the last five years at making the bean pasta, which is very difficult. And all our pasta was delicious.
We ended up with pasta and fagioli (pasta and beans) two ways. The traditional way which is a soup with beans and noodles, and then a fun new way, where we made the pasta dough with bean puree. This was our favorite dish of the day. Probably because we fried some of the pasta and put it on top.
Traditional
Marcella’s pasta and fagioli.
With the hazelnut pasta we made a mushroom sauce with pancetta, shallots, and herbs.
We used the buckwheat to make Pizzoccheri, which is traditioanlly from a valley in Italy up north by Switzerland. It’s a baked pasta with buckwheat pasta, cabbage, potatoes, and cheese.
Best part of today was getting more pasta practice in! We are getting good.
Day 7 – Veggies
Today we made minestrone soup, lentil soup, eggplant parmesan, and an eggplant mousse with chocolate ganache (not as weird as it sounds). Lots of dicing veggies today.
The best part was learning how to make tomato sauce from scratch. Here are the sauce phases, then incorporation into the eggplant parm.
Minestrone before and after.
Finished lentils (really easy), eggplant parm (compared to what we are used to eating in the U.S., there is very little parmesan in the traditional recipes), and the mousse with ganache.
Day 8 – Preserved Codfish
I thought we left the codfish in Portugal, but apparently not. Today, we made a cod dish with salted cod, and one with dried cod (salted cod was tastier). We also learned how to clean anchovies (they got fried), and make mayonnaise.
Here are the anchovies before, pictured with a beautiful polenta dome (we put the cooked polenta into a metal bowl with a little water in the bowl to cool and it popped out of its mold perfectly), and after they were fried (with a little fried polenta).
Below are most of the finished products. In the foreground, polenta cut into cute shapes and topped with salted-cod mousse. In the back, veal with tuna mayo (weird, but tasted pretty good).
Day 9 – Colored Pasta Day
More pasta! We made spinach triangles filled with asparagus and shrimp, blank ink pasta with cuttlefish (we cleaned the cuttlefish and tried to use the ink, but they sprayed out all their ink when they were caught, so we had to use packaged ink), coffee-flavored pici with artichokes, and red-pepper tagliolini with zucchini.
The black pasta was our favorite. Here is the cuttlefishe’s journey to the plate.
He got scared and sprayed all his ink.
And some more pretty pasta.
Finals.
Day 10 – Gnocchi
We made all kinds of crazy gnocchi – normal potato, beet, spinach and ricotta, chestnut, and one with a choux dough.
Mom’s last day today. She got a big hug and kiss from Marcella.
Preface: I wanted to take cooking classes while we were away, and got a few recommendations on schools in Italy from one of Dan’s Apple colleagues. She went to a professional school in the Piedmont region that sounds amazing and I looked into, but ultimately decided I don’t need to be a professional chef right now, and landed on Giglio Cooking School in Florence. I signed up for three weeks of the month-long course (I would have done all four, but our visas run out before the class is over). My mom decided to come join the fun, and is here for the first two weeks of the class. And we are the only two people in the class!
Marcella is the chef and owner, and teaches most of our lessons. We are in class for about 3.5 hours a day. Whenever we need herbs or bay leaves we just walk out the front door and pick them from the garden. There is staff whose only job it is to clean up the dishes after us. At the end of every class we sit down and enjoy what we’ve made along with a healthy amount of wine. It’s nice.
Day 1 – Fresh Pasta
On the first day, Marcella greeted us by the gate to the school. We told her we like to eat and she looked us up and down like she wasn’t so sure (we took this as a compliment on our physiques). Then, she asked us if we are athletes. So we immediately liked her. Marcella also told us at least three times that we are “different” Americans. We weren’t exactly sure what it meant, but she said it after we confirmed knowing that you peel and eat broccoli stems and telling her we are willing to eat anchovies.
We got lots of good information on pasta day. For example, there is no such thing as all purpose flour in Italy. Instead they have one million kinds. But basically, it all breaks down into semolinas (made from hard wheat), and farina (flour, made from soft wheat). We learned that cheese is made with some animal enzyme, so it isn’t vegetarian. And that parmesan is lactose free. Also, tomatoes weren’t in Italy until the 1700s! They come from Mexico.
We made three different pasta doughs, five different pasta shapes out of the doughs, and five sauces.
For meat sauces, we learned the order of operations for a classic sauce is: fat, veg, meat, wine, tomato. For a Bolognese it is way different: fat, meat, wine, veg, maybe tomato.
Rolling and shaping pasta above. Pasta with squids below. We also learned how to clean a squid.
Orrecchiette with broccoli on the left, and one of the meat sauces on the right.
Our favorite – ears and broccoli.
It was all delicious, and we are pretty confident we can make it again.
Day 2 – “Basic Preparations”
Today, we made a “brown” broth (made from roasted meats and veggies), a broth (made with chicken and veggies), which we then clarified (bizarre process – you add egg whites and more veggies to the hot broth and the egg white grabs all the “dirt”) and turned it into consume. And finally, we made two fish stocks – one we used to make risotto, and the other we reduced down to a sauce for shrimp.
Beginning of some meat broth.
We had a substitute teacher because today is Marcella’s birthday. His name is Angelo, and he describes everything as “beautiful.”
We learned that when you make a broth, you toss in the onion skins which give it color and nutrients. But never carrot skins. The veggie ratio is always (though never exactly precise) 1 part onion : 1/2 part carrot : 1/4 part celery.
The brown broth we will use on Thursday for pasta filling. The meat broth was used to make a consume. We made crepes (one egg, add flour until it gets sort of firm, get all the lumps out, then add milk until it looks just right, very easy) with parsley in them, then cut them into ribbons, and poured the consume over them. Like so:
Here is what the two bisques turned into — liquid for risotto and sauce for shrimp.
Apparently arborio rice is not the preferred risotto rice. Shocking. It is carnaroli, the king of rice.
Day 3 – Meats
We made four recipes today. Two are ancient Roman recipes that have pretty weird stuff in them, but were surprisingly tasty. The third and fourth were more “modern” preparations, and also delicious.
We learned how to de-bone a chicken (sort of. Any chicken I debone in the future will not be beautiful). We cut the chicken in two, de-boned, stuffed with a weird mix of stuff, then sewed them up and roasted them. We pan fried some lamb, then poured a vinegar based marinate over it. We took a round cut of veal and cooked it in a pot with raisins, wine, anchovy paste, and some other random things (old roman recipe).
Finally, the Brasato (the best one). We took a piece of beef, tied it up, browned it. Then, we softened finely chopped carrots, onion, celery with broth in a small sauce pan. Then added wine and the beef, and let it slow cook away. This was delicious, and if you come over for dinner, I will serve it. Here is the Brasato before and after its wine bath.
We asked Marcella to make sure to tell us why we are not normal Americans today, but she didn’t think of anything.
Chicken.
Veal.
Day 4 – Stuffed Pasta
Busy day today. Four kinds of stuffed pasta. What new thing did I learn today? How to cook and clean a brain.
We made: (1) tortellini with broth; (2) spinach ravioli with artichoke and ricotta filling; (3) ravioli filled with liquid broth (basically a soup dumpling) with a zucchini puree and yummy orange-carrot on top; and (4) angilotti filled with some crazy meats, including the brain, in a sage and brown butter sauce.
Spinach raviolis from start to finish.
Fillings for the tortellini and angilotti.
Some finished product.
Day 5 – Fish
Today I learned how to fillet a fish! We cleaned and filleted a branzino. We made some shellfish in tomato sauce, cured salmon with a celery souffle, tuna marinated in white wine, and swordfish in an orange/wine sauce.
Branzino!
salmon and souffle.
swordfish with citrus.
This is my attempt at recipe writing. Enjoy and you are welcome.
If you are still reading, I’m impressed. This post is long . . . . Week two started today, so lots more to come.
One loyal reader has requested an Ask the Travelers post, where we answer your questions about extended international travel with a pug. So, send us some questions in the comments, and we’ll post answers next week.
Unemployed and Traveling 