lentil spread with curry

you don't get enough legumes in your diet??

try this nice bread spread

250g cooked french brown lentils
1 chopped onion
1 garlic glove
1 tsp curry powder
olive oil
pepper
salt
chopped parsley
lemon juice

fry onions in olive oil, when they are golden add curry, garlic and lentils and cook for 3 more minutes, than let all cool down. Blend the lentils with olive oil, salt, pepper, parsley and lemon juice.
If you like it more creamy add some yogurt.

Enjoy!!!!

Weekend in the Baix Empordà, Catalonya with Fideuà

Last weekend we went up to visit friends in the  beautiful Baix Empordà.

They own a huge country house with a lot of  pinterest corners and I couldn't 

resist to take some photos.

After a hearty Irish breakfast provided by Stephen, we went for a "cafe amb llet" in the tiny village
Vall Llobrega and a walk in the fields.

While we were chilling after a dipp in the pool, our friend Meme prepared a fideuà,

a traditional catalan dish , made with short lengths of dry pasta called fideus. 
Instead of boiling the noodles Italian-style, the Catalan way is to cook them with only a small amount of liquid in a wide earthenware cazuela or paella pan. Here, the noodles are first browned in olive oil, then simmered in a rich fish and shellfish broth. 
It’s a sort of cross between risotto and paella, and it’s a dish for all lovers of Mediterranean fish soups in the bouillabaisse family. 
Broth is added at intervals as it is absorbed, but not much stirring is involved. 
A dab of garlicky allioli, the Spanish version of aïoli, is added to each soup plate before serving.

If you want to make some on your own, try the following recipe:

TOTAL TIME

1 1/2 hours

• Extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 onions, chopped (about 2 cups)
• 1/2 pound small shrimp, shell on
• 4 large garlic cloves, roughly chopped
• 3 small dried hot red peppers, or use 1 pinch cayenne
• 1/2 teaspoon fennel seed
• 1/2 teaspoon coriander seed
• 1 large bay leaf
• A few thyme sprigs
• Salt and pepper
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1 1/2 pounds meaty bones from cod, snapper or halibut, rinsed (or use boneless fish chunks)
• 12 clams
• 1 pound mussels, cleaned

FOR THE FIDEUÀ

• 1 pound fideus noodles (dry), or use Italian fedelini or spaghettini
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• Pinch of saffron crumbled into 1/4 cup water
• 1 pound mussels, cleaned, for garnish
• 1/2 pound large shrimp, shell on, for garnish (optional)
• 3 tablespoons chopped parsley
• 1 teaspoon orange zest
• Allioli, for garnish 

PREPARATION

1.

Make the broth: Put 3 tablespoons olive oil in a heavy soup pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and sauté until softened and lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Add small shrimp, garlic, hot pepper, fennel, coriander, bay leaf and thyme. Season generously with salt and pepper, stir to coat and cook 2 minutes more.

2.

Stir in tomato paste and cook 5 minutes, until mixture begins to look dry. Add fish bones, clams, 1 pound mussels and 8 cups water; cover and bring to a boil. Uncover, reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes.

3.

Strain through a sturdy mesh sieve into another pot, pushing on solids with a wooden spoon. Discard solids and keep strained broth hot. Taste for salt. Broth should be well seasoned. (Can be made ahead, though eat it within 24 hours, or you can freeze it.)

4.

Make the fideuà: Heat oven to 375 degrees. Put fideus noodles in a large roasting pan or baking sheet. (If using Italian pasta, break it into 2-inch lengths first.) Pour 2 tablespoons olive oil over noodles and toss with hands to coat. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, turning with tongs if necessary, until noodles are golden brown. (May be done in advance.)

5.

Place a cazuela or wide heavy pot on the stove. Add toasted noodles, pressing down a bit. Ladle 3 cups hot broth over noodles and bring to a boil. Push down on the noodles with a wooden spoon as they soften into the broth. Add saffron-infused water and cook for a minute, then stir to mix. Add enough hot broth to cover pasta by 1 inch. Lower heat and cook at a simmer for about 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add more broth (and adjust heat) if mixture dries out.

6.

Scatter remaining 1 pound mussels over the top, then push them down until barely submerged. Cook 3 to 4 minutes, until shells open. Turn off heat. The noodles should be cooked but firm, and the mixture a little soupy.

7.

If using the large shell-on shrimp, season them and sauté in 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat for 2 minutes per side.

8.

Ladle into individual soup plates. Mix the parsley with the orange zest. Garnish fideus with shrimp, if using, the parsley mixture and a spoonful of allioli.

YIELD

4 to 6 servings

• NOTE

  A clarification on the name of this recipe: Fideus is the name of the noodles used in the dish. Fideuà is the dish made with these noodles.

For my mother

Over the years I got from my mother all sorts of materials,

often family treasures, 

like antique linen, lacework, ribbons..

..retro prints from the 70ties, which where taken down in the 80ties

and thanks to my mother's sense for value!! were carefully stored

heavy old linen curtains with huge burgundy prints,

folk cotton prints and and and...

seems  here pool is bottomless..

an in a weeks time she and my father will load their car again to drive

more goods down to Spain

so when my eyes got caught on my antique linen stack the other day,

I thought this bag might be the right thing

to say: "I love you Mama and thanks for being loved by you"

Silvana

easter in Connemara

..hey hello there,

I am for a few days here in Connemara,
weather is fantastic and the whole place around the Old Monastery Hostel is covered in Wild Garlic

a gift from mother Nature

you can use it like spinach, doing a pesto, like fresh herb in a salad or soup
or mixed with sea salt,
like in the following recipe

blend 100g wild garlic and mix it well with 100g of the sea salt, you get a quite liquid  paste than mix it with the rest of the sea salt.
Lay out a backing tray with kitchen tissue and dry the salt /wild garlic mix on it outside.
Takes about 8 hours on a sunny day. Don't dry indoor, cause it smells really strong!!

or how about Jamie Olivers wonderful wild garlic& sausage fusilli???

 http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/wonderful-wild-garlic-and-sausage-fusilli???


Happy Easter wishes

Silvana

romesco sauce for BBQ

BBQ is such a nice food experience, whether you do it meaty or you go vegetarian.

it´s easy to prep and if you have guests and they join in with a salad or the desert, than there is hardly no kitchen work involved....

....so there is no excuse not to do some little extra effort and get one of the bests sauces done..




"the Romesco sauce" originates from Tarragona, Catalonia and contains only goodness



here my recipe:

• 100g roasted almonds and hazelnuts
• 1 head garlic
• 1 slice stale bread soaked in red vine vinegar
• 6 sun ripe medium size tomatoes
• 2 large red peppers
• 1 cup extra virgin olive oil
•  3 dried Nora peppers soaked in hot water or 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes or small hot pepper
•  salt and pepper

• Roast garlic, red peppers and tomatoes on a baking sheet with a bit of olive oil for about half an hour at 180ºC.
• skin tomatoes and red peppers and squeeze out the soft garlic from it's skins
• put the roasted almonds and hazelnuts (I don't bother to peal the dry skin off), the tomatoes, red pepper and garlic pulp together with bread I previously had soaked in vinegar (make sure not to take to much - especially if you use Spanish vine vinegar!!) in a food processor or use a large bowl and a blender
• ground, mix and drizzle the olive oil into it, than add salt and pepper and the scratched out pulp from the Nora peppers.

i.... ja esta!  Bon profit!!

Silvana

Me and Kirsty McGee

when I am diving into my "just me weekends" and I create the chaotic set up for my crafting,

- meaning that I spread out good part of my materials to see what triggers me on this time-

and I turn on the music
full volume
no teens around complaining "Mamahhh!!!"
not for the noice of cause, but for my music preferences

and there they are, strong female voices:

Nina Simone, Amy Macdonald, Katie Malua, Melissa Etheridge, Marla Glenn, Lhasa de dSela,
Alanis Morissette, Aretha Franklin..

but there is one I favour at the moment and her name is Kirsty McGee

here a taste

Silvana

Shopping in Barcelona

Yesterday I had to do quite a big shopping tour in Barcelona for the students in my workshops.
First of all I went to Nunoya for some kimono prints Maria uses for a colourful and elegant
log cabin quilt and I passed some time in the shop, cause they had got some new KOKKA fabrics...
dangerously beautiful!!!

After that I needed I little coffee and sandwitch break at one of my favoured places for that, just around the corner from Nunoya.
"La Granja" with it's old roman wall in the back, good background music, very good coffee and a good sized sandwitch for just 4euros.

Then I went on the hunt for one of these Diane von Fürstenberg wrap dress pattern...
.. and got hold of this one

it says "easy" and might be just the right to start, like I haven´t sewn a proper dress for ages.

All excited next stop was to get the material for it. So I went straight to one of the most stunning
fabric stores I know : Ribas i Casals - I have been to this from the very beginning living in Spain and it's incredible what you get there.
Yesterday the crowd was buzzing in there, seems that everybody wants to do the spring collection.
I got some really smooth material for two wrap dresses and some other fabrics.. the offers are just to
good..

Last stop was a real Patchwork shop, which I visit frequently more for it's good selection of fabrics
than for the friendly attendance... got what I needed and than back out of the city.

By the time I was at home and completely exausted, I thought it's really great to live so close to a great shopping city like Barcelona...but just close..

 ...today I started with the wrap dress!!!

Silvana

scrapping the scraps

Doing Patchwork and creative sewing for about 15 years, creates boxes and bags of scraps!!!

And like I am a real recycle, up cycle and upgrade junky

I hoard them like treasures, going through them to reorganise and categorise, than starting to mix them up again to see which ones are working together...

...always creating a mayor mess around my workspace, but just feeling happy 

discovering another snippet of a long ago used up fabric.

But know I found the ideal way to give a lot of my fabric scraps a chance for glorious show up.

Years ago I got from my German cousin a bale of white cotton, lots and lots of meters...

great to count on for my project:

I cut the cotton in 4 to 6.5cm wide stripes

grap what ever comes of my scrap box and cut the fabric bits roughly equal

than I sew them in an garland to a cotton stripe, cut them with scissors and sew the opposite side to another white cotton stripe

now I match them with similar wide fabric bits to a longer patched stripe,

white cotton stripe on either side and on and on it goes...

There is only one rule to this work:

No concession in matching colours!!!

everything counts...and if it gets a bit crooked, the livelier and better....

Hope you have a nice weekend ahead.
I will go for some material shopping in Barcelona tomorrow....

Talk to you soon
Silvana

wild at heart

 
when I stumbled the other day over this pin at Pinterest and got all excited by the idea to knit up all my carefully collected yarn scraps.
Seriously, I never thought that there is a way to match the awful colour and texture mix of them.
But from my experience in scrap patching, I know, the wilder the better!!!
So I just got started last Friday evening and by the time it was past midnight I was already half up the way...
as I looked at the job at day light the following morning, I was stunned by effect.

I am working with a circular 100cm wooden 7mm needle and use what ever I have in the scrap basket,
merino, mohair ( doubling the yarn), Aran tweed ( my favoured) and pure new wool, a lot of the wool I
brought down to Spain nearly 20 years ago!!

Like I don't know yet, if this is going do be a poncho or a wrap, I casted about 180cm length of stitches.
Working in rows of Knit and Purl stitches as it pleases me, and if sometimes I just get confused in the middle of a row -doesn't matter...

So this is an other WORK IN PROGRESS !! and so much fun...

Hasta luego
Silvana

All you knit is love

I was giving a knitting workshop this month for beginners,

introducing them into knitting with circular needles.

It was quite a task, as my students are Spanish and they already new a bit of the job, working with long needles...

and this was my dilemma!!!

Cause they have this funny way of  clamp them under the arms and lift the yarn over the needles, instead of catching it...

The mere look at it gives me muscular cramp,

but they resisted to learn it the other way,

so we kept on going round and round...

and made beautiful and comfy double  loop scarves from wonderful 100% wool, 

which

I bought in my favoured wool shop in Barcelona

All you knit is love

Carrer de la Barra de Ferro, 8

It has to be something like this...

a few days ago I was looking for a wrap tunic pattern in the Internet, but I couldn't find anything interesting.

Instead I came across with a lot of wrap dresses, most of them referring to the fashion icon from the 70ties, Diane von Fürstenberg.

As I scrolled through the images I got really amazed by the way a simple design can be so feminine, comfy and easy to make and decided to get me pattern and fabric...

Work in progress...

you remember the gorgeous Japanese fabrics I purchased for one of my students???

we started one of my favourite 9 patch design for beginners.

ohh, its so easy and the effect just stunning!!

you sew blocs of 9 from

13.5x13.5 mm squares

ones the blocs are finished you make a cross cut right in the centre of each bloc

(you get 4 pieces)

than turn two opposite corners of to the centre of the bloc

(now two large squares and two small squares are facing each other in diagonal)

sew the bloc together again and join as much blocs as you need

for your desired quilt size.

 this one will have 4 by 6 blocs and a size of about 140x210cm

Five playing...

...or how to knit cute boot cuffs!!

I used 100g bulky yarn and a set of 3,5mm bamboo needles and a 5mm crochet hook

cast 12 stitches on each of for needles

than start with the fifth working in rounds

always K2, P2

work up to a length of 22cm

than loosely cast off

use the last stitch to crochet the shell edge

stitch in between two K stitches and work 5 DC

and in between two P stitches work one SC

all the round

work the second boot cuff the same way,

if you like you can add a crochet flower!!!

Enjoy!!

shopping..

the other day in Barcelona, I popped in one of my favourite shops:

nunoya, Carrer de la Palla, 6

they sell gorgeous Japanese kimono fabrics, as well as the extraordinary Echino collection designed by Etsuko Furuya.
Over the years I have sewn a lot of things with these fabrics and I just love them!!
Here a selection of my latest purchase for one of my students..

it's going to be a quilt soon!!!