The Foods and Wines of Spain - A Review Focused on Food Self-Sufficiency - Part 1 - By Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Foods and Wines of Spain – A Review Focused on Food Self-Sufficiency – Part 1 – By Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After receiving my first freelance assignments to provide recipes and menus for the Barcelona Summer Olympics in 1992, I became a frequent library user at the Centre Pompidou (Beaubourg) in Paris, France where I lived at the time.

The Centre Pompidou was a reference-only library with an extensive gastronomy collection in addition to collections for engineering, sociology, anthropology, and art history.

I wanted to learn about Spanish food for the entire nation for future writing assignments.  I had written about Catalan food for the region that surrounds Barcelona in northeastern Spain, but wanted to broaden my knowledge on the topic.

At the time, the most comprehensive book about Spanish cuisine in English was The Foods and Wines of Spain by Penelope Casas.  My local bookstore on the rue de Rivoli did not carry the book, and I wanted to use the book now.

Not being able to take home the book was a challenge, but I worked with it in the following way to make Spanish meals using Casas’ recipes with ingredients you could find in any Parisian or Californian supermarket.

I made more than one visit to go through The Foods and Wines of Spain and ended up memorizing its contents before I finally bought a copy of the book on a trip to London.

The following method helps with reference-only situations when you need recipes:

1-Look up sample menus to know what kinds of food go together and in what order in a Spanish meal

2-Look up recipes in the index, which has a page number where you can find the recipe. 

3-Write down recipes you want to use in your own language

4-Read the introduction to get an idea of regional foods and ingredients

5-Spend at least 2 hours working on the hors d’oeuvres and appetizer chapters alone.  Eating 3 or 4 appetizers often makes a vegetarian protein combination, which lets you buy high quality fish and seafood for the weekend.

6-I have eaten a pretty Spanish Med Diet from the Pyrenees region for 3 decades with the overriding theory that you have to have the combination of protein-carbohydrate-vegetable present at each meal.

The portion size and number of vegetables changes with scientific research, but that general idea helps me do vegan meals up to prime rib ones thanks to protein combinations that you can read about on the Purdue University online page on that topic.

My “Med Diet Plan” for Spanish food follows on my next blog.

End Part 1.

To be continued…

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Hearth-Side Sushi: Robata Grill and Sake Bar - Part 2 - Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Hearth-Side Sushi: Robata Grill and Sake Bar – Part 2 – Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

A fresh green leaf along with tender lemon slices decorated the dish of octopus sashimi that I ordered.  I shared the octopus sashimi with our family friend.  We both agreed that it was chewy without being tough.

I could taste the ocean in the octopus slices.  I am wary of fresh octopus, though, since my first try of it left a sucker attached to my lip; I like fresh food, but not that fresh.

Sashimi is raw fish without rice.  It can serve as a prelude to sushi, which is raw fish with rice and wasabi and often nori, a black-green seaweed sheet.  California rolls, by the way, are usually cooked fish presented like sushi rolls.

I prefer Japanese omelets called tamago to sushi however.  My Japanese host mother made tamago for me when I was an exchange student in Japan.  (The owner of the restaurant came from the same town where I stayed in Japan I later found out.)

The flavor of tamago omelets disconcerts most Americans to begin with, because sugar goes into the omelet’s preparation.  The flavor of the rolled omelet I ate had rice inside and nori seaweed outside reminded me of salty-sweet French toast.  I liked this treat dunked in soy sauce without green horseradish wasabi.

Laurent ate grilled sand dabs with a Sapporo beer while I sampled a Kirin beer that seems to go well with sweet Japanese sauces.

A green tea ice cream put the finish on our lovely meal.

It was easy to say, “Thank you.  We have eaten well,” when we left.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Hearth-Side Sushi: Robata Grill and Sake Bar - Part 1 - Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Hearth-Side Sushi: Robata Grill and Sake Bar - Part 1 - Reviewed by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Robata is the sort of restaurant that I described to my daughter Florence as a little girl as “fancy” or “touristy, but in a good way.” 

I wanted people in Monterey County to know how fortunate they were to have a real Japanese-style inn restaurant in the area located conveniently off Highway 1 with lots of parking in Carmel, California.

I queried my editors at The Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000) about doing a review on Robata.  I told them in my query that going to Robata in Carmel was like taking a trip to Japan without having to leave Monterey County.

I think The Weekly editors just liked listening to my pitches sometimes.  They gave me the Robata assignment for the local restaurant that serves locals and tourists alike, which follows in modified form:

Hearth-Side Sushi: Robata Grill and Sake Bar

“Honored guests are here,” says Robata’s owner in Japanese that is loud enough for her staff to hear, as she seats patrons at their tables.  The effect is to make the Japanese surroundings even more inviting in a restaurant whose name means “fireside.”

Fireside dining is always available on Robata’s patio, but when we visited, my husband Laurent, family friend, and I chose to eat in the cozy indoors with dark woodwork, rice paper covering the windows, and hanging red lanterns.

Laurent picked up on the Japanese genius for design by noticing how one table would be covered with a blue tablecloth while the table next to it was covered with two blue cloth napkins laid out to look like diamonds.  Japanese music played softly.

Robata’s menu reflects the steakhouse and sushi tradition that became popular in the US due to the high quality of Kobe beef and various kinds of sushi that are hard to obtain in the US.

Laurent’s appetizer, called kushiyaki, was a filet mignon kebab with teriyaki sauce and qualifies as a Japanese steakhouse invention.  Green peppers separated the tender, grilled chunks of meat that the chef glazed with a sauce made of soy sauce, sugar, and sweet rice wine.

Sesame seeds decorated the kebabs along with wisps of fresh ginger, adding a lively flavor to this combination.  The kushiyaki came on a dark green ceramic dish with burgundy-colored flowers, which contrasted nicely with the color of the peppers.

End of Part 1.

To be continued.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Aloha Spirit in Monterey: Hula's Restaurant Review - Part 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Aloha Spirit in Monterey:  Hula’s Restaurant Review – Part 2 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The co-owner I spoke to at Hula’s says that the restaurant offers five choices of fresh fish nightly.  The co-owner also stated that they only serve fish that is on the safe harvest list from the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The four fish that show up most often on Hula’s menus include:

-ahi (a slightly strong flavored tuna with light pink flesh)

-ono (a sweet flavored tuna with white flesh)

-mahi mahi (sweet-flavored dolphin fish with white fish)

-hapu (delicately flavored sea bass, also known as grouper, with lean, white flesh)

Diners have a choice of how they would like to have these fish prepared, including style as diverse as:

-coconut-encrusted

-Cajun

-lemongrass-encrusted

-pan-fried with onions

-macadamia-nut encrusted

-blackened

For his dinner, Laurent chose the wasabi fish special with mahi mahi, which is one of the most popular items on the menu.

Laurent’s order arrived blackened on a bed of pale green wasabi mashed potatoes that had the green, Japanese horseradish mixed in for flavor.

A cream sauce made with wasabi covered the fish.  The mashed potatoes were delicious.  The sweet flesh of the mahi mahi hardly needed the wasabi-cream sauce, but it still tasted good with it.

I ordered the luau pork plate that came with coleslaw and rice.  The co-owner I spoke with told me that in Hawaii, a pig for a luau would be roasted in a pit for several hours.

Hula’s roasts their pork with teriyaki and molasses.  They add pineapple at the end for flavor:  The pork almost tasted like a dessert except for the saltiness of the pork.

We drank a surprisingly good wine with our meal:  A Maui Blanc.  The wine is made from pineapple wine and tasted great with the blackened mahi mahi and the luau pork.  The wine has been made for 20+ years in Maui by Tedeschi Vineyards.

The two co-owners of Hula’s lived on Maui for 20 years.  They operated restaurants after graduating from college.

Article End

If you have never tried Hawaiian food, Hula’s is a fun place to sample without leaving Monterey County.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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