Roasted Garbanzo beans

garbanzo pan
Originally uploaded by EatingVideo

I got this recipe off of SteamyKitchen, and served it with lamb meatballs. It is incredibly easy and gives the garbanzo beans a nutty crunch and taste. Flavored with whatever spice you want to use. The recipe is linked above.



The meatballs are half ground beef half ground lamb, seasoned with salt, pepper, grated onion, garlic, oregano. Browned in the pan then finished in the oven at 400deg (same temp as garbanzo beans) with marinara and red wine.



I served them together in a bowl, the toasted garbanzo acting as the pasta or starch for the meatballs. Turned out great.

One Egg Tortilla de Patata... Ostrich Egg

ostrich obligatory pacman
Originally uploaded by EatingVideo

I received an ostrich egg for my birthday.



It was an odd but extremely funny gift and of course presented a bit of a challenge as to what to do with it. I was very wary of going too straight forward, ie scrambled or fried egg as I wasn't sure if it would taste just like a chicken egg. I chose to make a one egg tortilla de patata. A quintissential spanish dish served in homes and bars around the country.
Basically it is cooked potato, onion and garlic salt and pepper set in egg. I added some chopped chorizo, and pancetta as well as a tsp of pimenton.
The first job was to open the egg. The family threw out reccomendations, hole saw, screwdriver, mallet, but we ended up scoring the top with a saw and cracking it open with a wooden pestle.





The egg cracked presented the contents still safely hidden behind a thick membrane (amniotic sac) which I cut into and then poured the egg into a large glass bowl. My wife about lost her lunch at that moment as the egg gurgled, squashed and slithered out of it's shell. I will post video at the end of the post cause it's not a very appetizing moment. Having said that she did take my daughter and go out to dinner instead of waiting for the tortilla. The white and yolk are very intermingled with an orangy color, It smelled sweet, almost with a hint of vanilla, strange but pleasant.
Ok then I was on my own from here. I peeled 4 yukon gold potatoes 2 onions and 6 cloves of garlic and diced them. I sauteed them in olive oil some chorizo and a tsp of pimenton.



and pancetta



I sauteed it till it was almost done, the potato still had a bit of crunch but barely. I seasoned this with salt and pepper.

I initially thought I could cook all this in my large cast iron skillet, but the side isn't very high... and I had a ton of egg. I decided to transfer it all to the oven and use my relatively new clay pot from La Tienda.
I put the empty cazuela in the oven and preheated the oven to 350. When both the oven and cazuela were at 350 I added another bit of olive oil to the pot, half the potato, the now scrambled egg and the rest of the potato.



I then increased the temp to 400 and cooked for 10 min. At 10 minutes I mixed the ingredients which were partially set and cooked for another 10 minutes. After the total 20 min it was set so I switched to low broil for 4 minutes till it looked like this.



I flipped it onto a serving platter (the tortilla is 12 inches in diameter)



I summoned some pac-man vibe with a slice





It tasted great, very close to a chicken egg, no longer sweetly fragrant as it was before but with a nice pimenton aroma. Clearly have a bunch left over for breakfast and some snacks.


The egg cracking video is below, sorry if it is gross

ostrich egg open from Eugenio Monasterio on Vimeo.

Vegetable paella

Vegetable paella
Originally uploaded by EatingVideo

We had a small gathering of friends to celebrate the week of birthdays. I grilled some lamb, my wife made some great hummus and seeing as we had some vegetarian guests, I made a vegetable paella.
Ingredients
3 cups bomba rice
9 cups of salted water (should taste like the ocean) (including the water from the asparagus)
1 lb of roasted red pepper, sliced into strips
4 cooked artichoke hearts
1/4 cup of pine nuts
1/2 cup of cooked large white beans
one jar of white asparagus
2 handfulls of fresh green beans
2 tablespoons of pimenton
pinch of paprika
one large grated tomato
4 cloves of garlic
1/3 cup of olive oil
2 cups of assorted wild mushrooms

I sauteed the garlic and mushrooms and pine nuts in the olive oil, the added mushrooms and when soft added the paprika and quickly mixed and added the grated tomato.
After another several minutes I added the water, paprika and the rice.
when the water came to a boil the green beans went in followed by the red pepper strips and large white beas.
when the water level lowered to the rice then I layered the artichokes and white asparagus on top. I kept it on the burners till a slight char developed on the bottom, then served.
Turned out great!

Geeking it up some

I have finalized my plans for two trips to geekdom. the first, I am taking my daughter to W00tstock in NYC. Jonathan Coulton is headlining. Should be a great time. Staying with my brother and his wife in Brooklyn for that one. My older brother asked how one gets into this subculture. It is a combination of music and celebration of geek and gaming culture. We ended up in it probably a combination of our video gaming lives + my wife and I grew up with They Might Be Giants. We saw Coulton open for TMBG and loved the show. He then played at The Hat Factory with Paul and Storm and we loved that show as well. They both play PAX regularly and I've been dying to go to a PAX show with the kids for several years. This year the plan is to take the boy to PAXeast in March, (as long as he takes care of business in school.) PAX is the Penny Arcade Expo, mutant child of Penny Arcade where they created the gaming show they would like to attend. Penny Arcade has also spawned my favorite charity Child's Play . Child's Play funds therapeutic recreation and child life services (two generally underfunded nonbillable servcies in many hospitals) which help with leisure skills, and general play and distraction for hospitalized children. Overall this is going to be a great pair of trips, hanging with my kids one on one seriously geeking out with "my people."