A bit sleepy/groggy tonight, don't know why. Too much sugar, perhaps?...
Brought back from Spain: turrón, several kinds – egg yolk and sugar, which I love (and which I was told doesn't last, so I bought only one); almond paste and crushed almonds; and chocolate with almonds. Didn't bother with the wafer and egg whites one – had just hacked my way through a whole one that I'd bought in Rome, which was a bit like chewing through stone....
Roasted almonds, roasted hazelnuts (they're better than the ones they sell here). Dried fruit – sounds boring, I know, but these were some French dried fruits that were in the grocery in Sitges that were sort of half-dried and had a very different consistency to the ones I'm used to; the strawberries and apples were especially good (my guests the other night went right through a bowl of them). Buying figs here, at the corner store, reminded me of the much more amazing figs we took off the trees in Crete – G– and K– had become adept at this, watching for certain trees by the side of the road, planning when the green would turn purple. And the herbs there, and the mastikha....
I keep making things a bit more interesting in the kitchen – pesto in the hummus, a cayenne-lemon mixture on the salmon, pistachios in the saffron rice – feta marinated with olives and garlic... That's actually one of the advantages of visiting Mediterranean countries: one relearns that food is supposed to be good, rich and strong-flavored all the time.
One thing I had to leave behind, because it seemed impossible to take liquids through British airports after the Heathrow scare: the chocolate liqueur – not merely chocolate-flavored spirits, but more like pouring chocolate. And they were selling a white chocolate and a vanilla liqueur that were similarly made – ah well, next year....
As I've said, my increased fascination with strong flavors and related luxuries (bath oils, incense) may be associated with living in a northern country (and of course it's turning into autumn). Or a replacement for a sex life (Freud) or distraction from the relative boredom of living alone in a small city... of course, this jars slightly with the Marxist tone of my department: but then I've always been the self-indulgent bourgeois here.
And perhaps I'm just too sleepy to make sense tonight....
Comments