eat, drink and just be!

valendive 5 course tapas

happy valendive day! yes valendive! i received a huge box of endives from californian endive farms yesterday which inspired me to make small endive boats for valentine day. since we are going to a ballet tonight, there's not enough time between work and ballet to sit properly in a restaurant and have a nice dinner. so i decided to make dinner tapas style that we can make them ready within 10-20 mins and then leave the house. 

our first course is very similar to the one i made a couple of years ago (pomegranate endive salad) but this time with avocado, heirloom tomatoes, and cilantro. i chopped them all into tiny pieces to make it like a salsa and added salt pepper, lime juice and olive oil for the taste. it's nice to leave the salad in a bowl for a couple of minutes before serving it in the endive boats. they get the flavors better.

another inspiration i had today was because of having appointments in japan town, which gave me the chance to stop at the japanese supermarket afterwards and get some yummy ingredients. therefore our second course is a katsuo tataki sashimi. katsou is a very meaty fish and has a very special aroma. i marinated it with slices of garlic, ginger, green onions, and soy sauce for a couple of hours and then served it sashimi style. our third course is a reinvention of rotate sashimi using the scallops i bought at the japanese market. i sautéed the scallops briefly in hot butter, and added some lime juice, wasabi and soy sauce to it.

and the fourth course is grilled shrimps. i marinated them in some lime juice, olive oil, saffron, salt and pepper. then grilled them for five minutes on each side. the fifth course is a pear and cheese salad in the endive boats. the combination of pear and goat cheese make them a perfect dessert and the endives give them a fresh flavor and it's easier to have the endive bites. hope you also enjoy a magnificent valentine's day. nousheh jahn!

dinkelaugen: spelt eyes

now that i live in austria, i try to bake some austrian cookies for christmas. austria is a catholic country and people celebrate advent; the whole month of december.  every sunday in december they lit up one more of the four candles and eat cookies in the meanwhile. i'm not religious at all but in order to have some cookies for my first advent sunday, i baked dinkelaugen. i got the recipe from this austrian website. i translate it for the non german speaking readers.:-)

ingredients:

- 80 gr powdered sugar

- 2 egg yoks

- 160 gr butter

- 240 gr spelt flour

- 2 teaspoon vanille sugar

- your choice of jam

to make the dow mix everything exept the jam in a bowl with your hands until they stick together. cover the dow and put it in the fridge for two hours. preheat the oven to 170 degrees. spread the dow on a surface and cut the round cookies out of it and make a hole in half of them. bake the cookies for 12 minutes. spread jam on half of cookies and powdered sugar on the ones with the hole. enjoy the cookies.

adas polo: rice and lentils

it's getting colder in austria and having a wintery dish in the evening is a great treat. the ingredients for adas polo are:

- 2 cups rice

- 1.5 cup lentils

- one onion

- 1/2 cup raisins

- 1/2 cup medjool dates

- 50 gr butter

- saffron

- cinnamon

- salt and pepper

 

boil the lentils with three cups of water for half hour, if they are not cooked add another cup of water and let them cook for another 15 minutes. depending on the type of lentils it can take from half an hour to one and a half hour to cook! bring 3 cups of water to the boil and add rice, salt, pepper, butter and dissolved saffron into it. leave it on medium heat till the water is gone, then lower the heat and add the lid for five minutes. in the meanwhile chop onions and saute them in some olive oil. add raisins, finely chopped dates,and  cinnamon and saute them all together briefly. they can burn very fast, so just saute them for a couple of minutes. add the lentils to the mix and turn the stove off. when rice is ready mix all the ingredients into the rice and if you like to have a crispy tahdeeg (rice cake on the buttom of the pot) let every thing cook on low heat another ten minutes. (it should be a none stick pot) then turn it upsaide down and you have the whole rice cake with all the yummy stuff in it. enjoy it with some yogourt. nousheh jahn!

 

 

gheymeh bademjan stew

as i explained in the previous post, i have been running more often lately and since i have also become vegetarian, i need to find super foods to get enough nutritions without meat. one of the best strategies i have started is making persian and other oriental food and replace the meat with other vegetarian sources that are rich in protein. one of my favorite persian meals is gheymeh bademjan stew, which is mainly yellow split peas, eggplant, and meat. i make different variations of this dish by replacing eggplant with other similar vegetables such as squash and okra, and i also use different types of beans to have more variety. you can try the same recipe using lentils, red lentils, black beans, ...

ingredients:

- one large eggplant or two thai eggplants

- five tomatoes

- two cups of split peas 

- two dried lime

- one small onion or green onions

- one or twp potatoes

- one carrot (another one of my additions to this dish)

- olive oil

- half a teaspoon cinnamon

- salt and pepper

first peel and cut the eggplants and saute them in olive oil till they get soft. in a dutch oven or a stew pan saute the chopped onions. add the split peas with four cups of water, salt and pepper, and dried lime and let them cook for half hour on medium heat. if you have already soaked the beans over night or a couple of hours, you need to add less water. when beans are cooked, add the tomatoes, and other vegetables, and cinnamon and sauteed eggplants. let every thing cook together another twenty minutes. enjoy the stew with some saffron basmati rice. nousheh jahn!

 

run, shikamoo, run!

if you love food as much as i do and your job is sanitary like mine, you probably try to find ways to do some physical fitness. it has always been my concern with as much time as i spend at the computer, how stay healthy and sane. while i lived in san francisco, we had a great fitness studio across the street from our place which made it easier to exercise and harder to bring excuses not to! since i have moved to graz, it has been challenging to find a place that is close enough and i like it enough to exercise there. i also have so little time after work that i wouldn't have managed to go some where else for an hour of fitness and come back. i was lucky that i found a place by the river "mur" and since i came here i started running along the river. it's so peaceful by the river that my runs are even meditative for me. i started with 5k runs which i used to do in san francisco and added up a kilometer each ten days approximately. after about eight months now, i have run four half marathons and i try to run about three to four times a week.  although i should say running along the river is much more relaxing and fun than running in san francisco where i felt very stressed by so many people and cars. the first run i took part at was a 10k in at gesaeuse national park in austria. then i did a half marathon by woertersee. this one was a gorgeous run along a lake and it's a whole weekend event which brings a lot of people to this lake. although i was sick the whole week before my first half marathon, i managed to get through it with a pretty good time(02h.16min.) then i visited my husband and family in san francisco in september and while being there i ran the giant's half marathon which was a very fun run along the ocean from giant's stadium to golden gate bridge and back. it's the only run in san francisco which is not hilly. the temperature was also perfect and i improved my pace a little bit. a month after that i ran in grazer marathon and i got a bit faster and two weeks ago i finally ran with my sister in vienna at herbstlauf in prateralee. i used to run there when i lived in vienna and me and my husband got married there in the beautiful lusthaus. so i just have too many memories there. now that it's very wintery and cold here in austria i try to keep on running and stay motivated which is not very easy in the dark cold days, and although i love to eat austrian pastries, i try to eat them in moderation.;-)

now that i run a lot and i am also vegetarian, i am trying to find alternatives for my shikamooness to have tasty and healthy food to stay fit. i'm going to share these with you in my next posts and hopefully keeping you inspired.

porec to rovinj

we had a long weekend last week and my husband has also come to visit from san francisco, so it was a perfect time to take a short trip from graz to croatia. we decided to stay in porec and do some sight seeing and seafood- eating from porec to rovinj. porec is a cute little town at mediterranean sea with small streets and tons of cafes and restaurants to hang out at the water or close to water. it's landmark is the euphrasian basilica from 6th century. since we were staying in porec i also went running in the mornings when the sun rises at the harbor and the fishermen are back from fishing. it was beautiful but enjoying all that seafood was even better.

on the way south along the coast, the scenery is gorgeous especially lim fjord. Owing to its geological history, this estuary is one of the most instructive examples of limestone hydrological development. The Lim stream used to flow through the valley but dried up regularly, and was really only present after the heavy rain. The Lim estuary has the appearance of a canyon. The estuary is rich in fish, and high quality oysters and mussels. Because of the special conditions of the sea water in the channel (less salt content, a higher concentration of dissolved oxygen and well-researched temperature gradients) sea flora and fauna are particularly well developed. we went down to the fjord and enjoyed some fantastic fresh mussels and oysters.

then further south is the beautiful city of rovinj. so many cute little streets on this town that end at the water. i could imagine sitting there at the water and reading books for ages. the old church in the middle of town and a beautiful roman theatre are some of the highlights to see there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.