eat, drink and just be!

my birthday resolutions

i had my first birthday in graz last week; far from family and close friends but there also many beautiful things that made it special and memorable. i am also getting older and trying to take a better care of myself. specially getting back to living alone, it's really hard to have the courage and take the time to cook for yourself. so i decided to make some decisions that lead to a healthier life style. you might even see that i have been passionate about a healthier life style in paper from 2006. 

i have been eating less and less meat in the last year and i haven't missed it. so i decided to cut meat totally from my diet. this is the first resoltion on my birthday. i haven't become vegan though, and i also like to eat sea food every now and then. i started my resolution even a week before my birthday to get used to it and it really was not hard at all. i really enjoy it. another great motivation is that my coworker has been a vegeterian for more than 15 years which helps me to learn from an expert what and how to substitute meat in life. you can see how she surprized me with a bag of goodies; a package of ingredients for vegeterian for beginners.

then i got a great birthday celebration by my sister who visited me and brought me a magnificent chocolate cake. it looked so perfect that i felt ashamed to eat it. another resolution is to burn all the delicious stuff i love to eat so much to stay healthy. i am lucky that i live by the river "mur". i try to go running every day that the weather is not very cold or rainy. i also track my runs with a free app called RunKeeper. it has been a great help to me so far since it shows you your progress in distance and speed. it also allows you to use your own music while using the app during running. it also reports to you how much you have run every five minutes in your ears if you like. i have set the goal to run a half marathon by the end of the summer. i keep you updated how i make progress.

 

 

my first nowrouz in graz

it has been crazy busy these weeks. i love my job and i'm thrilled by having such fantastic coworkers. they are so knowledgable and down to earth. (i should say this is a good part of culture shock being back to europe. it's very refreshing after seeing californian narcissism.) but there's so much to learn at the beginning that i feel i need to not sleep for months to catch up. weekends have also been packed with buying furniture, putting them together and generally putting my life together. so there has been so little time to pay attention to the change of the seasons. but as you might know from my last years posts, persians celebrate the first day of spring (march 20th or equinox ) and it's officially our first day of the year. since i don't have any family and friends in graz, it felt very lonely (not like last year.) especially when the count down happens, you should be surrounded with your close family and i was surrounded by them but over skype.:-)

but my nowrouz was not only a cyber nowrouz over internet. i had little celebrations here too. my sister visited me the weekend before nowrouz and helped me build my closet and we also cooked sabzi polo mahi and enjoyed the nowrouz meal. she also got me flowers from graz'es market and we made a little haft seen.

furthermore i had a nowrouz celebration by my dear colleage k. she invited me to her house and we celebrated with her room mates. her room mate made a nice avocado + mango salad as appetizer, k made a fantastic vegetarian quiche with potatoes, onions and gruyere cheese. i also made a small pile of persian saffron raisin cookies as dessert.

from san francisco to graz

i know i have been very absent on my blog in the last month, but there is a good reason for that. i'm going to start a new job in a very far far away place at an amazing university. the whole process has gone fairly quickly: i learned about the opportunity in early december, applied right before christmas, had an interview two weeks ago over skype, and was offered the position early last month. i really didn't expect to relocate at this point of my life but when I read the job description, i thought they wrote it just for me; it was as though they had tailored every aspect of the job to who i am and what iwant to be doing - i could not be more excited about the work.  

the opportunity, however, doesn’t come without its challenges. it will be necessary for my husband and i to be apart for periods of time as the position is at the institute for electronic music and acoustics (http://iem.kug.ac.at) in graz, austria.  the project takes about three years and i also earn my ph.d. degree. i start my new job next week and i'm very excited about that. i'll be posting about the technical aspects of the project if you are interested in sonification and audio technology on my computer music blog.

i have had some sleepless nights in the last month as i discussed with family and friends the pros and cons but we agreed this is a great opportunity.  of course i would miss my husband and teh great friends i have in teh bay area. i also had a fantastic lunch with jina and bonnie short before i left to enjoy delicious californian meals at zuni cafe.

i flew to vienna last week. my sister and brother in-law live in vienna and they helped me a lot to get settled in. i went to graz and found a small place to live and i'm officially moving in this weekend. so this time i had my very first austrian meals in graz and of course it was as fantastic as i expected. between seeing apartments, we ended up having coffee and pasterie at a cute old cafe called kaiser cafe. surprisingly in such an old style cafe, a room was dedicated to arnold schwazeneger which was called governor's room and had interesting modern art works around the room. as you might have noticed graz is very proud of him. i guess i should say i am the opposite of him. he is a grazer in california and i am a californian in graz?!

my first austrian meal was of course schnizel and tafel spitz. i definitely write more details about austrian dishes in the next posts. this is just an overview about my new life.

let's get back to our foodie topics. i arrived in vienna, a city where i used to live more than ten years and i have so many great memories at many cute cafes and restaurants here. but since i was in such a hurry to settle down, i had to go to graz immidiately. graz is the second largest city in austria and is the capital of styria. it has also been the cultural capital on europe on 2003. i'm going to introduce graz to you in these years step by step, but since i have family and friends in vienna and i know the city so well, i would also share my culinary experiences in vienna every now and then when i get the chance to come over for weekend.

i arrived in carnival season which means a lot of krapfen in all bakeries. one of my favorite ones is the ones that they make at cafe demel. i ended up having one on the last day they have it.

 

 

holidays' summary

first of all happy 2012 to all my friends and dear readers from all over. since we can't celebrate it together, i try to summerize some of our holiday related food activities in this post. i start from the week before christmas when i made a couple of christmas cookies. i made two persian types of cookies to share with my frineds and bloggers from the bay area bonnie, gina, and patty. of course we missed many of you who are far away especially joanna.:-) i made raisin cookies and walnut cookies and a couple of days later i missed some austrian cookies as well and i made some vanillegipferl.

this was the first year we were at home for christmas and not some where else in the world. so we bought a tiny tree and my husband made a delicious beef wellington for the evening.

we lived in vienna over a decade and as much as we disliked the cold winters we enjoyed the winter activities a lot there. although it gets so cold, people are out all the time mostly because of the great tradition of having christmas markets all over the city that not only offers kitschy little gifts but also have great home made snacks and hot drinks. drinking gluehwein and hot punsch keeps you warm and you can stay outside and talk to your friends for the whole night when it's 10 degrees below freezing temperature. although we are not austrian we miss the culture a lot and we have some austrian friends here in the bay area. we decided to celebrate the holidays with them making hot drinks and eating some austrian traditional snacks. this way those of us who feel homesick get a little bit of warmth in our stomachs. we made three different types of hot drinks:

- gluewein: hot mulled wine: red wine, combined with spices and served warm. in austria they have the spices mixed like tea bags but since we don't have that here, we made them from scratch using some cloves, cinammon stick and anis. the best way to do it is to leave them in vodka and rum over night and then use the alcohol the next day. the proportions of wine, vodka, rum, ornages and orange juice depends on how string you want your drink to get. i guess the later in the night most people prefer to increase the amount of alcohol. one thing you have to be very careful about is to keep the drink on low heat all teh time. it should never get to boil.

- wiener feuerzangenbowle (viennese flaming fire tongs punch) is a hot new year's or winter punch made with red wine and rum. one of our friends even brought the main ingredient for this drink which is a big sugar cone. the process of making this is more fun than making other hot drinks. you have to pour all teh ingredients(wine, juice, ornages) in the pot first and then leave a gitter on top of the pot and put the sugar cone there then pour some rum on the sugar cone and set it in fire. the sugar-fire caramelizes and falls into the pot.

since we had a couple of kids and pregnant ladies among our guests as well, we serve a kinderpunch too.

- kinderpunsch is an alcohol-free hot punch which is made of hot apple or orange juice with spices.

 

 

 

yalda: the rebirth of the sun

i've been reading a book by roger houston these days, called saved by beauty. although written by an american with a totally different perspective than mine, it has totally brought me back to my home country. there are some days in the year that i become very nostalgic and miss the good old days in my childhood in iran. one of which is yalda, december 21th, is the longest night of the year. we call this night yalda which refers to rebirth of the sun. it's based on the concept of light and good defeats the darkness which is represented by the longest night of the year. this night is in persian month of Day, which was also the name of the pre-zoroastrian creator god (deity). later he becamse known as the god of creation and light, from which we have the english word day (the period of light in 24 hours.)

the ceremony of celebrating this long night in iran consists of family and friends gathering together, sit around the fireplace and reading poetry, telling strories, feasting on nuts and wintery fruits such as watermelon, oranges, and pomogranates. reading poetry from our renowned persian poet hafez has become the central part of yalda tradition. usually we sit together and each of us chooses a ghazal randomly and we each read one around the circle. this can take till very late hours of the night if we are celebrating it with a big group of people. here a couple of words from hafez:

life's a riddle - give it up.

there's no answer to it but this cup ...

hafez is known as a sufi but not the kind that goes to monastery or wander around as a beggar. he was actually against those practices and hypocrisy of those sufis who set themselves apart from society and the reality of life as you can see in his poems:

now that i look back at my wasted life

it is better to have fallen down drunk in the tavern corner

prodence and proper thoughts lie far from the dervish way

better to fill your breast with fire and your eye with tears.

balang: buddha's hand

if you have read my post on balang jam last year, you might be familiar with this amazing fruit. buddha's hand which is called balang in iran is a fragrant citron fruit which has a thick skin. i love the smell and the flavor of it. that's why as soon as i saw it in the market again this year, i immidiately bought several to make my favorite jam. you can check out the jam from my post. 

but i also try to incorporate it in other dishes. since it has such a citrus flavor it could be a great substitute for lemon zest and orange zest but more flavorful. i bought some fresh shrimps as well, so i wanted to try to use the beautiful conchigliono pasta with them and finish it with a wonderful zest of the buddha's hand.:-)

 

 

 

 

 

drink, dance, and detox!

happy thanksgiving every one. hope you have had a fantastic weekend with family and friends. i had a great one but as always after big festivities, i feel very stuffed with a lot of great food. i am a big fan of good food and traditions, love thanksgiving festivities, and i am not just a healthy eater. i love butter and cookies and pies and a big fat turkey but I have been eating a lot these days. it started with halloween parties, then thanksgiving and there are going to be many christmas parties in the next couple of weeks. i feel so stuffed that I feel it could be great to take a break from so much heavy food and give my stomach the chance to take a break and get excited about christmas. we bought a juicer recently and i thought what a better way than detoxing my body with some fresh juice. i am not going on a juice diet or any thing extreme; i just try to substitue my snacks between the meals with fresh pressed juices these days. this way i get a lot more vitamins and minerals from fresh pressed ingredients and i also get full between the meals and eat less. i'm also going to add a half hour dance in my schedule every day. i know it sounds too much but just going to the gym is getting boring and trying to make my own music and dance to it once a day gives another motivation to change up the habits.

so here i share a couple of my detoxing juices with you. one of my favorites is watermelon juice. slice the watermelon into small chunks, put them in the blender and enjoy it fresh. if you live in california watermelons are usually ripe and sweet but if they are not, you could add a little bit of honey in the blender.

 

 

 

 

 

 

another juice i share with you today is a mixed green detox juice. i juiced 4 stalks of celery, one cucumber, a handful of parsley, and a bunch of spinach. then added some lemon juice for taste. this juice tastes very fresh but a small cup of it is enough to get all those great vitamins and minerals. enjoy!

 

salmon endive bites

i have been thinking of eating lighter meals in these days because we are going to eat a lot on thanks giving weekend and soon will be christmas which means many pre christmas parties with tons of food. so i'm going to share some of my light meals these days with you. also as you might have noticed from my older posts i love endives and i love serving salads and light meals in them.

i made some salmon endive bites to have a light but filling meal. ingredients:

- one slice of salmon

- three endives

- half a grapefruit

- one cup edamame beans

- fresh cilantro

- fresh dill

- olive oil

- one lime

chop the salmon in tiny pieces and marinate it in salt, pepper, dill, cilantro, olive oil and lime juice for a couple of hours. saute edamame beans with some salt, pepper, and olive oil for five minutes. add them to the mix.  peel the grapefruit short before serving that it doesn't get bitter and add it to the mix. if you don't like the acidity of grapefruit and lime together, i would suggest using only one of them, but i am persian and i really prefer the fresher taste than creamier ones.:-) serve the mix in beautiful endives and have a bite. nousheh jahn!

foodbuzz blogger festival

i had a fantastic weekend taking part in foodbuzz blogger festival. i try to share and summarize my experience with you in one blog post. it was great meeting so many amazing bloggers especially ones that i have been following their blogs for so long and finally meet them in person. i also totally missed those of you who are far away and couldn't come all the way to san francisco. 

the festival started at the beautiful terra gallery with some wine and appetizers. i met a lot of interesting people there. first of all gina (who you might know her from those gorgeous cake pops she made). i should say gina also brings every one together. she has introduced so many fantastic bloggers from the bay area and all over to me such as emily. one of the bloggers who came to the festival from far far away; all the way from kuala lumpur is joanna. it was such a pleasure to finally meet her in person. check out her magnificent blog to get to know more about her chic and gorgeous treats.:-)

this is joanna taking picture of me taking picture of her (a recursive picture.)

after the coctail party, we had a magnificent dinner. there were so many good dishes that i just have to mention my favorite ones.

- ceviche shooters: these fantastic small portions of ceviche were made of snapper, lime juice, cilantro, jalapeno, and tomatoes. it has a lot of similarity to my seabass ceviche but i think it was marinated much longer which has given it a great flavor.

- brandade (salt cod) cakes: these fish cakes were one of the best little bites i had that night. the flavor of caramelized leek has made it so special.

there were tons of dishes but i only mention the ones that i really liked. i also was not a fan of the desserts. there was nothing very yummy to talk about.

second day started at federated media (foodbuzz headquarter) which is luckily a couple of blocks away from where i live. i took part in a couple of very interesting sessions. one of which that was very interesting was held by a couple of bloggers who are great photographers. it was great to hear their advice on how to take better pictures for you blog. the other session i went to was held by stella and irvin on how to use social network for your blog. since i am an engineer and nerd myself, i have my own resources to know a lot about social media technically but it's great to hear from non technical people about other aspects of it.

after the sessions we chit chatted a bit and then headed to metreon to the taste pavilion. for the tastings we could also bring our plus ones with. so i took my husband with me. since he comes from a farming family, he really enjoyed seeing all these californian local small farmers and food producers. i should say he specially enjoyed a fresh pressed apple sider since his father and granfather used to grow cherries and apples.

indeed there was a lot of marketing going on the taste pavillion but it was also very inspiring to see how some of the small local businesses has succeeded. one of my favorites were different small food makers that were sponsored by foodzie. they have a great blog that shows where each of the products come from. another favorite of mine was to talk to endive growers. you might know from my post on endive salad that i am such a fan of endives. i have to eat about three of them each week at least. they are a great snack and also good in different salads or great to fill them with dips. meeting these california vegetable specialists, i learned that all endives produced in the us come from this one place in northern california which was started in 1978 (so endives in the us are almost the same age as me.)

another interesting product was ticings.com. they make beautiful edible customizable icing sheets and artisan sprinkles. i would love to use their icings on brownies in different occasions.

at the tasting pavilion i was also lucky to meet tyler florence and get his autogram. he also demoed cooking pork chops at the gala dinner the same night. the saturday's dinner was mostly a better food but we were a bit rushed into eating it that i couldn't enjoy it as much. but it was great anyways to meet all the bloggers again and spend more quality time with them. we also ended up going for another drink afterwards to continue our converstions.

some of the hightlights of gala dinner was brandt beef farms filet mignon and meyer lemon roasted prawns or heirloom carrots, celery root puree, and pepper demi. this was delicious, especially i really like the heirloom carrots. the dessert was a san francisco trio: - sourdough bread pudding - cowgirl creamery cheesecake - scharffen berger chocolate mousse. from the three of them only the cheesecake stood out. i really love cowgirl creamery products. they are some of the finest and best cheese in the city. this dessert was the only one that had a very suttle taste. the other two were too sweet that you couldn't taste the great ingredients.

it was a wonderful experience to be part of foodbuzz bloggers' festival and enjoy all these activities with like-minded bloggers and friends. i totally recommend to any food bloggers who are interested to take part next year and i'm thanksful to foodbuzz that has brought us all together. i'm very happy that i took part but also very tired of not having a weekend. so i am going to enjoy a restful weekend sitting at the fire, reading books, and drinking tea. hope you have a great weekend too. either anventurous of relaxing.

 

 

foodbuzz 24X24: hallowien kuerbisfest

since me and my husband lived in austria for over a decade and used to go to the pumpkin province of austria - styria - where "kuerbisfest" or "pumpkin festival" was celebrated every october, we wanted to bring a bit of the austrian autumn to san francisco. to introduce some cultural and culinary experiences to the city and combine them with halloween, we invited a couple of friends to our home for "hallowien," which, in german, means  "hello vienna." to make our event even more special, foodbuzz is featuring our "hallowien kuerbisfest" for their october 24x24 food event. the foodbuzz's 24x24 showcases food blog posts from 24 foodbuzz featured-publisher-bloggers of 24 unique meals occurring around the globe during a 24-hour period. i am thrilled to be featured this month.

for the event, i decided to have all courses somehow related to pumpkin. for that, i found several great recipes from an austrian recipe database: ichkoche.at. if you know german, this is a great collection of recipes. since i don't live there any more and have access to more variety of produce in california, i tried to make variations on the recipes and create some of my own ideas.

we started off with a kuerbissalat (pumpkin salad), steirische kuerbiscremesuppe (styrian cream of pumpkin soup), and kuerbisauflauf (pumpkin casserole.) 

ingredients for pumpkin salad:

- mixed greens

- cocktail tomatoes

- pumpkin chunks

- pumpkin seeds

- pumpkin seed oil

brush the pumpkin chunks and seeds in separate baking dishes with some olive oil and lime juice and leave them in the oven. preheat the oven to 350f.  leave the seeds for 10 - 15 minutes in the oven and the pumpkin pieces for 30 minutes. mix them with the greens and tomatoes and garnish it with the pumpkin seed oil. this oil is very common in styria. it has a very strong taste and aroma which makes it a perfect garnish for very simple salads. i prefer to have it even just with mixed greens. 

 

ingredients for the soup:

- four small pumpkins

- three shallots

- one whole garlic

- butter

- vegetable broth

- sour cream

- chives

- parsley

- marjoram

- cumin seeds

- salt and pepper

- pumpkin seeds

- pumpkin seed oil

- ginger

i baked the pumpkins for 30 minutes, then carved the insides out; this way it was much easier to carve. chop shallots and garlic and saute them in a dutch oven with butter, crushed ginger and cumin seeds. add the squash meat and saute a couple of minutes. add vegetable broth slowly. stir and let it cook on low for twenty minutes. taste and add salt and pepper. mix the soup in a food processor with chives, marjoram, and sour cream. garnish it with pumpkin seeds, parsley, and pumpkin seed oil.  guten appetit (as the austrians say)!

ingredients for pumpkin casserole:

- two layers of puff pastry

- six eggs

- bacon

- two shallots

- pumpkin chunks

- celery root 

- mozzarella cheese

- butter

chop the bacon and shallots in small pieces and saute them together until there's no fat left on the bacon. saute the celery root chunks and pumpkin chunks about ten minutes. in a bowl mix eggs, salt, pepper and the sauteed ingredients. preheat the oven to 450f and smear butter on two baking dishes. lay the puff pastry on the baking dish. pour the mix in the baking dishes and bake it for twenty to thirty minutes. add mozzarella on top and bake for another ten minutes. enjoy.

after having so much as appetizers we needed a break before starting with the main dish. we also paired most of our meal with a great dry austrian gruener ventliner. it's a very refreshing dry wine which i really enjoy with vegetarian food or lighter meals.

we recently bought a small projector and we decided to make this year's halloween a bit more scary and fun by having a movie marathon during the food feast. the only problem is that when you eat so much, you get sleepy and can't watch too many movies.:-) we should have started our party earlier but then we couldn't use the projector because it was still daylight. we have so many leftovers that we should have scary movie nights the whole next week.;-)

finally although we were so full, i served the main dish. it also took a long time to cook it. i cook rice very often but mostly persian style. this time i wanted to make a risotto, so our main dish was pumpkin risotto with baked chicken.

i salted and peppered the whole chicken with potatoes, whole carrots, onions, and rosemary and put it all in a dutch oven, in the oven. after about half hour, i added two cups of broth and let it cook for another two hours. in the meanwhile, every twenty minutes, i basted the chicken.

ingredients for pumpkin risotto:

- four small pumpkins

- six cups arborio rice

- two bottles of dry white wine

- one litre of vegetable broth 

- saffron

- three shallots

- olive oil

- nutmeg

halve the pumpkins and bake them about 40 minutes in the oven. carve the meat out and keep the skins for filling the risotto in later. peel and chop shallots and saute them with olive oil in a big dutch oven. add the pumpkin in and add salt and pepper. add one cup of rice and a cup of wine and stir. keep on adding rice and wine and broth and stiring. never let the risotto get dry. taste every now and then and adjust the amount of salt and pepper. dissolve one teaspoon of saffron in hot water and add to the mix. add a little bit of nutmeg for taste. fill the pumpkin halves with the rissoto and enjoy it with or without the chicken.

for dessert, i made some scary cupcakes and pumpkin tiramisu. i won't explain the cupcake in this post because i used the same ingredients as the cake pops i made last week.

ingredients for pumpkin tiramisu:

- six egg yolks

- one cup mascarpone cheese

- two cups espresso (cooled)

- four spoons port wine

- fourty lady fingers

- one cup heavy whipped cream

- one cup pureed pumpkin

- three spoons sugar

- one teaspoon cinammon

- one teaspoon vanilla powder

- pumpkin seeds

in a large bowl beat egg yolks and sugar until thin and pale. add mascarpone and beat until smooth. add cinammon, vanilla, whipped cream and pumpkin and mix for another two minutes. in a bowl mix port wine and espresso. dip each ladyfinger into the espresso mix for a couple of seconds and place them in small dishes for a layer. spread a layer of mascarpone mix  over ladyfingers. arrange another layer of soaked ladyfingers and top with mascarpone mix again. leave tiramisu in the fridge for a couple of hours. sprinkle with pumpkin seeds and cinammon. guten appetit!

we had so much food and our guests also brought some wonderful cupcakes that we didn't manage to eat any of the tiramisu! we need another party to eat all the leftovers! 

thanks to foodbuzz for the opportunity and looking forward to next weekends foodbuzz blogger festival.