Lazy days of summer

Nantes, 11 Jul 2010

Do you ever marvel at nature's magnificence? Of parched grass and fallen cherries, les petites amies des fleurs dancing amongst the roses, a smokey barbeque, picking baby tomatoes off their mothership, hot sand beneath your feet, scorching sun teasing your skin, an ice cold swim in the atlantic ocean, a little nap in a hammock under the cherry tree...

the simple pleasures of summer, won't you please stay a little longer?

Lunch time paella posts

My housemate recently lamented that she quite liked (and missed Paella), a typical fare originating from Valencia in Spain. Last night, we hopped over to the supermarket to pick up a couple of things, and broke open our new pan that we had been using for stock since we didn't have a shallow one big enough enough to house all the ingredients. The final product turned out quite well, and this recipe works for me even ifthough the picture above seems to tell a tale of a Chinese Fried Rice. I digress. Just for keepsakes, here's the process:

From grocery bag to plate time: 45 mins

Season 4 mini chicken breasts fillets (about 120 g?) with a little salt and pepper and dredge in plain flour to cover. Drizzle a few ribbons of olive oil into a hot pan and slide in chicken pieces to fry on medium heat till golden brown.

While waiting, chop up 200g chirozo sausage (we used iberico chorizo fresh from the butcher), 1 medium yellow onion, 4 cloves of garlic and 2 pointed red peppers (or bell peppers if you wish but we like the pointy ones as they are sweeter).

Set chicken pieces aside. At this point, heat in another pan 1.8 l of organic chicken stock and seperate into two portions. Keeping the pan on the stove, add the sausage and fry a little till fragrant (about 5 mins) and add in chopped up onion / garlic / peppers. Leave veges and sausage to sweat a little more. While sweating, add a good pinch of saffron threads into one portion of the stock and let it infuse for about 10 minutes.

To the paella pot add 500g of paella rice / long grain rice and stir everything together so the rice gets a lovely coat of flavours. Pour in the saffron-infused stock, cover and bring the pan to a simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, sort of bringing the rice into the centre of the pan(to avoid any rice sticking and for even cooking). Pour the rest of the stock into the pan and let it continue to do its thing for another 10 minutes, stirring occassionally.

Mix in 100g of mixed seafood (squid / mussels / prawns) and a handful of peas (large or small depending on how much you like these petit pois. Cover and let the seafood cook for another 10 minutes. Slice up chicken into bit sized pieces and chop up a bunch of parsley. Switch heat off, stir in chicken pieces and chopped up parsley. Let the pan rest for two minutes, and gather up plates for serving. With 1 lemon, squeeze juice of half into paella and give rice a final stir. slice up the other half into wedges for serving with plated final product. Blissed out.

Ps: if you don't like chicken, replace with equal portion of fish or more seafood :)

Hindsight

Monday Musings

A friend who'd moved back to France over a year ago asked recently when I'd move over to the land of cheese. When I'd quipped, 'I don't know, it depends', he complained that my answer hadn't changed in the last 3 and a half years.

Upon reflection, I started to wonder if what I am looking for in life isn't quite so achievable anymore? Some five years ago, I was three weeks away from meeting the person who helped me map out some of the most significant decisions in my life. Except, I didn't know it yet. What turned out to be a simple exchange and advice of a tenancy arrangement gone wrong resulted in my 10,000km journey to the West.

How things have changed since then, the world economy deflated and collapsed in a matter of months, a la Black Monday style circa 1987, the environment has gone somewhat bananas, the path of consumerism expanding by the minute, I could go on. It is well and good that man always has the benefit of hindsight to pontificate endlessly about how things 'should have' been done to prevent this or that. Man, for some reason have the innate ability to just let it happen over and over, perhaps blinded and consumed by instant gratification, I don't know.

While I pondered the thought of looking back wondering if that was all that I desired, just living in the ebb and flow of life, I couldn't decide if the worst choices were made as a result of indecisions. As God gave Eve the choice to have the apple, as a father lets his son into a store to pick one toy, as we decide between new experience or a better salary, the overwhelming multitude of choices and life options and demand for utility results in the everlasting quest for a perceived and perhaps self-deluded happiness that maybe, does not exist at all.

Ah what travesty you might say, 'i'm happy!' But are you really? Did Eve not wonder what would have happened if she didn't have the apple, or the boy who wondered if he should have picked the toy train or the tractor, or even ourselves as we try valiantly to calm or even silence that little voice in your mind, 'you should have picked the other one'.

Funnily enough, it would be now obvious that what comes in tandem in such a situation is the devil of hindsight, and the eternal question of - 'What if'? It seems what lies beneath is a mockery of abundance and variety.

So my question is, since when did CHOICE become a liability?