Johanna Writes Madrid

Eats

The Spanish do many things very well. They can produce delicious things with garlic, they can roll their Rs in pleasing ways and they clap very fast without getting tired (at least the flamenco performers can). One thing that they cannot do well, however, (at least in my culturally biased opinion) is make tasty sweet treats. I blame lard. They use way too much of it.

As for real honest-to-goodness American style desserts, they are few and far between. There are a few places that have decent brownies but otherwise, the pickings are slim. Recently I noticed a new American bakery that has opened up in Malasaña. Yes, a good ten years after it began in the USA, the cupcake craze has finally hit Madrid. The Happy Day Bakery is decorated with boxes of cake mix, jars of peanut butter and other "typical" American products, a design scheme that led one Spanish fan to exclaim that "the decoration is like a fairy tale." None of my Spanish friends get why I think this is funny. Anyway, the cupcakes at Happy Day don't really do it for me unfortunately. The cakes are usually too dry and the frosting too fluffy and insubstantial.

The good news is that I recently discovered Lateral in Plaza Santa Ana  which has divine lemon meringue pie made in true American-style. The bad news is that we move to Barcelona in one week so I'll have to start all over again in my search for good desserts in the country of Spain. Wish me luck!

Recently Cooking

-German Chocolate Brownies. These are lovely except that the recipe should definitely be doubled. Also the topping was too dry. For the second batch, I used the coconut-pecan filling recipe from this site instead.

-Mint Chocolate Brownies. I used this recipe but added 1/2 teaspoon mint extract and half a bag of chocolate chips (mint flavored if you can find them) to the batter. Once cooled, I frosted them using the following recipe:

Beat 1 cup (227 grams) powdered sugar (icing sugar) with 2 tablespoons (29 grams) soft butter. Add 2 tablespoons milk and 1/4 teaspoon peppermint/mint extract and beat until smooth.

-Chicken Tikka Masala from The Pioneer Woman Cooks. This was absolutely DIVINE!

-Spaghetti with Meatballs also from The Pioneer Woman. Good but not great.

Recently Reading

-The Adderall Diaries by Stephen Elliott

-Over Here by Raymond Seitz

-Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas

Cherry

As I write this, Alex is attempting to remove several matchbox cars from our stereo speakers with a set of fondue skewers. Naturally I was the one who put them in there cause I like to do stuff like that.

This weekend we were supposed to have our first couchsurfer guests. We were expecting a couple from France who were traveling with their three year old daughter. Unfortunately they couldn't make and had to cancel their trip at the last minute. Too bad because we had also received (and turned down) couchsurfing requests for the same nights from several others including a Dutch clown who specializes in juggling fire.

I was also disappointed because I had cooked a huge meal in preparation for our stranger guests. Since cherries are in season I decided to make pork tenderloin stuffed with goat cheese and topped with a cherry balsamic sauce. And for dessert, homemade cherry ice-cream in my Rocket Chef ice cream maker!

I found the Rocket Chef in a thrift store in Lausanne. It had never been used and only cost about $2. Best of all, if James Bond had ever made ice-cream, this is definitely the machine he would have used- how could I resist?

The entire meal was delicious and luckily our friends Virginia and Steve came over at the last minute to help us devour it!

Pockypine

As I was going back through my photos from last month, I came across something that I can't believe I forgot about. The reason I can't believe I forgot about it is because it is definitely the most fabulous dessert that I have ever prepared in all my years of dessert making. Behold, the “Pockypine” cake!

While in Utah I made a Japanese dinner for my friends Heather and Jon. The main course was Chanko Nabe (sumo wrestler's stew) and since it's the recipe that Nico's babysitter taught me while we were living in Japan, I'll write it down below. While I was planning the meal, I was trying to think of what sort of dessert I could serve with it. I wanted it to be something Japanese but since I can't stand anything made with sweet bean paste, I was in a bit of a pickle. I finally resigned myself to just throwing a box of Pocky on the table after we finished eating but then the vision started to form in my head and within minutes of it's conception, I was speeding over to Michael's to find the perfect cake mold for my masterpiece. The perfect cake mold turned out to be a football cake mold and as I was driving back home, I thought to myself that this was one of those times in life where if I were to die in a fiery crash, my friends and family would be truly mystified for the rest of their days as to why I had a football shaped cake mold in my backseat.

The cake (spice with caramel frosting, and the Pocky quills (I used a combination of “Men's Pocky” and regular chocolate dipped) was the perfect finale to my Japanese meal!

Chanko Nabe (slurped down in huge quantities by Sumo wrestlers). Delicious when slurped down in normal sized amounts by people who are merely normal sized.

Put in a pot-

-10 cups of water

-dashi granules- follow what it says on the package but for the kind I used it was 1 tablespoon for 10 cups of water.

-1/2 cup soy sauce

-1/2 cup mirin

-1/2 cup sake

-3 T white miso (optional)

-a few chopped potatoes

-half a chopped onion or some chopped leeks

-12 shitake mushrooms (you can buy them in a big bag at the Asian market on 900 South)

-udon noodles (don't buy the kind that come with the seasoning)

-some chopped carrots

-one daikon radish (you can get at Asian food store or maybe at regular grocery store too)

-one small cabbage chopped

-some meat- chicken or beef

-some cakes of aburage (fried tofu)

-salt to taste

Just simmer it all together until everything tastes cooked and yummy!