Ortolans

I just watched Gigi which I enjoy seeing now and again. There is one segment where her aunt is teaching her to eat Ortolans. I knew, from the movie it was a little bird, but I decided to Google it. It is a member of the bunting family and a songbird and is apparently making a comeback. The British paper, The Daily Telegraph, calls it France’s cruellest food. I must admit it seems a very odd thing to eat, it is so small there can’t be much on it to enjoy although it is shown in the movie as being eaten bones and all. However, I remember in Spain that they serve small birds as part of their Tapas. I can’t remember what they were, sparrows or something, I am not sure, so what is so unique about Ortolans being eaten. They are a very expensive item on a restaurant menu, some places charging as much as £50 for the dish, a pretty hefty price for one little bird. The birds decreased drastically a few years ago but have made a comeback and now they are beginning to serve them again. How very sad. Quail and woodcock are eaten too and although small, they aren’t as tiny as the Ortolan which can be held in one hand. Apparently the reason they call it  cruel is because of the way the birds are trapped, then fattened up and finally drowned in Armagnac which has the benefit of marinating the bird at the same time. As the article says, maybe not as cruel as putting a live lobster into a pot of boiling water, but nevertheless still very cruel.

I love smoked salmon and these little hors d’oeuvres  from Kraft really appealed to me. It says 12 servings, I think I would be wanting more than 2.

Smoked Salmon Chips

 
12 servings

 

What You Need

1/2 cup  (1/2 of 8-oz. tub) PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese Spread
1 Tbsp.  finely chopped fresh chives
1 Tbsp.  finely chopped fresh dill
1-1/2 tsp.  milk
1/2 tsp.  orange zest
24 kettle-cooked ridged potato chips
1 pkg.   (4 oz.) thinly sliced smoked salmon, cut into 24 strips

Make It

MIX first 5 ingredients until blended.
ARRANGE chips in single layer on platter. Roll each salmon strip into cone shape; place 1 on each chip.
TOP with cream cheese mixture.
Make Ahead
For best flavour, prepare cream cheese mixture ahead of time. Refrigerate up to 24 hours before using as directed.
Variation
Prepare using PHILADELPHIA Neufchatel Cheese and baked potato chips.

Have a great day

Gigi, This and That as Well as the Other.

I am, of course, writing this on Wednesday night and I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy because I have just watched Gigi. Another of my favourite movies. Maybe I should go and get Bloodsport to change my mood. I’ve always love Gigi and particularly loved Maurice Chevalier. The first time I saw it, i made a point of seeing all his old movies whenever I could get hold of them or find them somewhere. He made some very good ones over the years. I always loved Louis Jourdan too I saw him do other movies but I can no longer remember what they were.

Today our new cleaning ladies start so I hope they prove to be good especially in view of what they charge. They did drop their prices for us, but even so it’s more than we have been paying, so here’s hoping.

Also bowling today. The League is now off until December 30th, but my Thursday group have decided to bowl on Monday anyway. Get at least one shot at exercise that week. With all the food around, I need it. Need to make use of my treadmill too.

Last night I was delighted to get a phone call from my cousin in California. We haven’t seen each other in a number of years, not since his son was stationed in Morehead City, NC and he visited us there too. Turns out he is just about one year older than Matt.

I won another book today too. I will talk about it later when I have it. I seem to be lucky winning lately, maybe I should buy a lottery ticket.

Not much to talk about tonight, still getting snowed upon, Matt reckons we have had 6 inches which, compared to some, really isn’t that much. Might get a white Christmas yet.

These figs really appealed to me, I’ve seen lots of figs in the stores. Of course the calorie count would be pretty horrendous I think. This was from Cooking.com.


Figs Stuffed with Chocolate and Almonds

Source: Casual Cuisines of the World - Taverna

Serves 6

Although the combination might not seem obvious at first glance, one taste of these confections shows how well-suited dried figs are to the rich tastes and textures of chocolate and almonds. Serve this after-dinner sweet with a glass of good Portuguese port or Madeira.

INGREDIENTS
1/2 cup slivered blanched almonds, plus 12 whole blanched almonds
1/4 cup sugar
2 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped
12 large dried figs

DIRECTIONS
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F. Spread the slivered and whole almonds on a baking sheet, keeping them separate. Bake until toasted and fragrant, 8-10 minutes. Let cool. Set aside the 12 whole almonds. Leave the oven set at 350 degrees F.
In a food processor fitted with the metal blade, combine the sugar, slivered almonds and chocolate. Use rapid on-off pulses to form a coarse paste.
Cut off the stems from the figs. Using a small, sharp knife, cut a small slit 1 inch deep in the top of each fig. Using a small spoon, stuff each slit with about 1 teaspoon of the almond-chocolate mixture. Pinch the openings closed. As the figs are stuffed, place them on a baking sheet, stem sides up.
Bake for 5 minutes. Turn the figs over and continue to bake until softened, about 5 minutes longer.
Remove from the oven and press a whole almond into the slit. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Have a great day

Top 10 Movies Blogfest

This is a blogfest being hosted by Alex J. Cavanaugh or, as somebody recently christened him, the Blogfather. If you click on the Ninja Captain's badge at the side, it will take you to his announcement.

At the moment, the top of my list is:
Avatar, fantastic movie, just wish I had seen it in 3D. I don’t want to know how it was done, but the idea of Pandora was incredible and I would love to be a Na’vi. If its sci fi, I enjoy it anyway. Its about scientists ‘driving’ avatars which are created with a combined genome of the local people and the human driver. One of the scientists dies and his twin brother, an ex Marine with a spinal injury, is sent to Pandora in his stead. He ends up getting really close to the Na’vi people.

The King and I, every time the king dies I cry, the film was just a fairy tale, the real Anna Leonowens wasn’t nearly such a nice person, not sure the king was either. Anna certainly thought they were all savages, if you read her memoires. Anna did help to modernise Siam though. Always liked Yul Brynner.

Anastasia, loved the concept that the Tzar’s youngest daughter might have survived. I always hoped she had. Yul Brynner again and Ingrid Bergman who was always a favourite. Such an elegant woman too, I think I saw most of the movies she ever made. One which comes to mind, was a slightly sad little move called The Yellow Rolls Royce which comprised three stories about the car and its current owners.

Gigi, lovely romance, lovely music. Liked Maurice Chevalier. In fact I made a point to see more of his films after I had seen this one. The time of the movie was an era I very much admired, clothing was so graceful and the lives they (well the rich anyway) led seemed to be admirable, or maybe ‘such a bore’.

The King’s Speech, well done and a good story based on fact. Colin Firth did an excellent job as the King and Geoffery Rush was a wonderful Lionel Logue. I was familiar with the speech done by the King himself although I didn’t hear it at the time, too young. Also, being too young, I had never heard about the king’s stutter which Colin Firth did beautifully.

Stardust, lots of magic and nasty witches; Michelle Pfeiffer was a great, but nasty, witch. More romance. Wonderful part played by Robert de Niro as Captain Shakespeare, one of the best bits in the movie. I first saw the movie on the plane returning from England and fell in love with it right away. Michelle Pfeiffer was a particularly wicked witch right to the bitter end. Of course there’s another love story. The hero has stars in his eyes.

How to Train Your Dragon, very funny although why Vikings should have Scottish accents, I haven’t a clue. A village is constantly plagued by dragons who steal their sheep and burn down their dwellings, the villages are excellent dragon fighters and know all about dragons from their many years of experience until the chieftain’s son, named Hiccup, turns it all on its head. The main love story here is between Hiccup and his dragon.

Dirty Dancing, great story and I love the dancing. Plus I was always nutty about Patrick Swayze. Certainly in his earlier films before he was struck by cancer. I loved him in Roadhouse and Ghost too although not so keen on Point Break which was a surfing movie, good, but not as good to me.  Particularly love Whoopie in Ghost, she played the most wonderful medium.

Starman, a love story with a twist and an alien played by Jeff Bridges. Earth has sent off invitations to aliens to come visit us. When one does, they shoot him down. He simulates a widow’s husband, but has to get back to his mother ship soon or he will die. At first she, the widow, is terrified but eventually, surprise, surprise, they kind of fall in love. OK, I love happy endings, so sue me!!

The Last Starfighter, you don’t have to be stuck in a boring life. A young man on a trailer park, fed up with spending his life fixing people’s power circuits and running errands. Disappointed about not getting a loan to go to a good college and take his girlfriend with him. His one pleasure is to play a video game of starfighting and protecting a planet against an armada. One day he breaks the record on the machine only it turns out it was actually a test for a real off world situation, not just a game at all. The only ‘name’ I know was Robert Preston of Music Man fame.

I want to say so much more on this subject, thinking about it, that I have started tomorrow’s blog about movies rather than make too long a post for the blogfest.
As this is all about movies, I thought a drink served on Oscar night would be appropriate.

Paris's Crimson Champagne Cocktail

Epicurious | February 2008

By Lara Shriftman and Elizabeth Harrison


yield: Makes 1 drink

Ingredients

Brandy-cranberry syrup

• 1 quart cranberry juice cocktail
• 4 slices fresh ginger
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 piece star anise

Champagne cocktail

• 1/4 cup brandy
• Champagne
• 1 fresh cranberry, for garnish

Preparation

For cranberry syrup
In a medium saucepan, boil the cranberry juice cocktail, the ginger, the cinnamon stick, and the star anise for half an hour or until reduced to 1 cup. Let cool.
For cocktail
Fill a Champagne flute half-full with Champagne and add the brandy. Add 1 ounce Brandy-Cranberry Syrup and mix. Garnish with fresh cranberry.
Cook's note: The syrup recipe makes enough for 10 drinks.

Have a great day

Gigi, Death Book, Bird Watching,

I hope everyone remembered to turn off their lights on Satuday night. We certainly did. Meanwhile I watched Gigi on TV. I don't know how many times I have seen that movie but I rarely fail to watch it when it comes on. It is one of my all time favourites; guess I'm a sentimental sap, but I really enjoy the story. I particularly enjoy Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold - as a young woman I saw several Chevalier movies on TV (they were even before my time) and always liked them. I also find the music of Gigi particularly delightful. The movie was made in 1958 and I think it has really stood the test of time with Leslie Caron playing the lead and Louis Jourdain as the leading man. In its day, it won 9 Oscars.

I have just finished the latest Death book by J.D. Robb, Fantasy in Death. It is particularly enjoyable to me as it centres around computers and gaming (albeit in the future). Not that I play games other than solitaire, I guess at my age I am too slow, I had a free one once and couldn't get very far at all. There is always a fair amount of 'computer stuff' in these books anyway - well if you look at how we use computers for so much today, in 2060 we will no doubt rely on them even more. I am staggered to see this is the 37th book, I didn't realise I had read so many or that J.D. Robb had written so many. Actually it says 37 in one place and 30 in another, I don't know which is correct. I have certainly enjoyed the books and love the main characters, Eve Dallas the police lieutenant, her fantastic and wealthy hubby, Roarke, her sidekick Peabody and several other characters who appear in all the books. One feels very familiar with all of them.

Glenda Larke was talking about birds in her back yard in her blog Tropic Temper, we used to spend a lot of time taking pictures of birds in our back yard in North Carolina, it is one of the things we both miss. There are lots of birds in the park outside our windows here, but you can only see them from a distance. In NC we had feeders, bird baths and nesting boxes and spent hours watching them. I made lists of the birds which visited and ended up with quite a number although one or two only visited in passing, like the one year we had an invasion of cuckoos, not the kind we get in England, and had no idea what they were. They were chasing something in our yard for the best part of the day, dozens of them, then they left and we never saw another one. Another brief visitor was the Fox Sparrow - one winter we had lots and lots of snow (unusual at the coast in NC) so we kept our bird feeder full. The fox sparrows visited the feeder which they don't normally do and it was fascinating to watch them scrape at the seed with both feet in an instinctive movement which would allow them to uncover food on the ground. We tried putting up a bird feeder on our balcony here, but were told to take it down as the people below us were getting seed all over their balcony.

A friend sent me an email today showing another problem caused by deforestation, I just had to share it with you.

This following recipe is a classic one from France who do the most wonderful stews and this one in particular is a favourite.

Coq au Vin Source: Dutch Oven Cooking/Longstreet Yield: Serves 6

Literally translated "chicken in wine," this is classic French bistro cooking at its best. A simple cheese and fresh fruit course with crusty French bread would be a delightful way to complete this meal.

RECIPE INGREDIENTS For the Chicken: 3 tablespoons olive oil 1 (4 pound) chicken, cut into 8 pieces 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, lightly seasoned with salt and pepper For the Sauce: 1/3 cup brandy 3 cups red wine 2 cups chicken stock 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar 1 tablespoon coarse-grained Dijon-style mustard About 36 red or yellow pearl onions, peeled 1 (16 ounce) can chopped tomatoes with their juice 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced 1 pound baby carrots, scraped 3 ribs of celery, cut on the diagonal into 1/4-inch pieces 3 cups sliced button mushrooms 2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary Salt and freshly ground black pepper 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley DIRECTIONS FOR THE CHICKEN: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. In a 5-1/2-quart Dutch oven heat the olive oil over medium-high heat until sizzling. Dredge the chicken pieces in the seasoned flour and then place 3 or 4 pieces in the hot oil, skin side down. Brown the chicken in batches, turning, until lightly browned on all sides. Do not overcrowd the pan with chicken or you will not get a nice browning of the skin. Transfer the chicken to a plate lined with paper towels to drain. FOR THE SAUCE: Immediately return the Dutch oven to the heat and add the brandy to deglaze. With a wooden spoon, scrape up any browned bits that have accumulated in the pan. Stir in the red wine, chicken stock, balsamic vinegar, mustard, pearl onions, chopped tomatoes, garlic, carrots, celery, mushrooms, rosemary, and salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, add the chicken to the pan, cover with a tight-fitting lid, and place in the oven. Bake, gently stirring every 20 minutes or so, for 2 hours, or until the chicken is very tender. TO SERVE: Transfer the chicken pieces to a serving platter. Place the Dutch oven on the stove top and bring to a boil. Reduce the sauce on top of the stove until it is nicely thickened, about 8 to 10 minutes. Ladle the sauce and vegetables over the chicken and top with the chopped parsley. Serve at once.

Have a great day