Rustic Italian–Fusilli Con Gamberi et Spinaci

The faint sounds of the Sunday Grove St Farmer’s Market coming in from the front door and the whirr of coffee beans being ground rouse me slowly from a late night playing Scramble and a last minute decision to watch a Samurai movie I’ve seen some years back.  The sheets are still warm, but the prospect of imbibing coffee tickle my nose. So I do a slow yogaesque transition from the bed to the door, to the can of Lavazza in the pantry, a spoon and filter, and managed to produce piping hot coffee in no time and survey the commotion as I sip.

View of the Farmers Market from the
opposite side to showcase the pretty wall mural

It is a small market – 12 or so stalls that includes flowers, two vegetable stands, an artisanal cheese maker laying out her meager spread of cheeses, dressings and salsas,  various nuts, seafood and oysters from Sta. Cruz, and… oh, pastry.  Coffee cup in hand, I snag a few bills, get down to the gate and cross over to buy a pain au chocolat, a plain croissant and a small pain de levain.
I rummaged through my meager rations in the fridge, throw away last week’s spring mix.  Eyes dart to the left over spinach, manchego, the fusilli pasta and decided I would go rustic, inspired by countless sits through Lidia’s Italy series.

Fresh garlic is milder than old ones,
 kinda like people LOL

While I miss the warmth of South Bay, I take delight in the small pleasures my new city and block has to offer.  The fact that I can boil pasta while I peruse additional ingredients downstairs and dash back in time to drop young sliced potatoes into the boil, feels decadent enough.  Akin to coming down to pick fresh herbs and pull out young carrots in your garden.  Okay, close approximation but not quite.  Cooking should be delightful, uncomplicated, simple enough, that allows you to be lost in the process and not in the clean up.  Like doing a one pot meal.  Except that cooking Italian elevates the whole thing into a new level. 
I turn on the Tuscan Episode of No Reservations, lost in the countryside with Anthony Bourdain as I sit down to Fusilli pasta sauteed in olive oil with fresh young garlic, shallots, shrimps, spinach and young carrots sprinkled with chili spices, a pinch of smoked paprika, herbes de provence and freshly ground garlic.  It is debatable if a young white whine would add to the experience of such a lunch on a glorious spring day, but why not.

Fusilli con Gamberi et Spinaci

2 cups fresh spinach, washed and cleaned
Young carrots, sliced
Young red potatoes, sliced into halves, drop into boiling pasta water in the last 3 minutes
Young garlic, minced, Young Onions, diced
6 to 8 pieces prawns, deveined and shelled, sliced into halves
chili flakes, herbes de provence, chopped parsley, smoked paprika, ground pepper and salt

Fusilli or Rottini pasta,  boiled in salty water al dente

Penzeys Spices imported from South Bay !

Saute the minced garlic, onions and carrots in 3 tbsp olive oil.  Drop the prawns followed by the pasta and potatoes.  Add the spinach and the rest of the dry ingredients.  Cover for 2 minutes, open and stir until prawns are translucent in color and cooked through.  Adjust salt and seasonings, add freshly ground black pepper.  Serve and enjoy.

Scent of Apples - my Own Culinary Diaspora

Rustic Mini Apple Tart with Guava

It is amazing how snippets of my college literary upbringing seem to intermingle and come back triggered by food. Gullermo Pesigan, my English homeroom class adviser would be mighty proud of me. He stood on top of his table to stress a point long before Dead Poet Society came about. So blame him for some of my eccentricity.

While Bienvenido Santos attempts to connect a displaced Filipino farmer in Kalamazoo Missouri to the essence of the modern filipina of his times in the story of the same title, how I relate to apples makes me reflect on my own detachment from my patrimony and yet untenable thread linking me in so many small ways. Leaving Manila was part of a longing not to be confined to a string of islands for the rest of my life, to shake off the toxin of a career that came too early, and this unshakeable need to connect with my muse, who is more a bitch most times, unless I am writing and cooking.

Apple pie is quintessentially American - how I make it is essentially me - a mish mash of who I am trying to be and memories connected to my youth - the guava preserve I spread on the bottom of the pastry on a mini tart pan is reminiscent of countless treks to the hills of my childhood in La Union to gather the fruit from wild trees, fill a sack, cross the river back to town, and watch as one of my grandmas peel and seed the guavas, boil them in sugar until the jam turns a reddish brown. The next morning, Grandma would wake me up, give me some coins, and I would walk three blocks away in foggy streets to the village bakery in my ratty pajamas and buy hot pandesal. I would come back to the scent of freshly boiled coffee, sit down on the rickety communal table, and dig into the jam.

At second grade I would not even have seen apples that much, though I read incessantly about them in my books, along with wheat, red barns and 4 H clubs. Nowadays, I don't even eat them raw, i brew my coffee with the touch of a button, my favorite niece Camille at the same age would not be allowed beyond the community gate to buy dinner rolls or vinegar, and I would not taste guava jam again unless I go to the Japanese grocery where they sell stuff from Hawaii or buy pastries from the Cuban bakery. I love that my childhood was bucolic, my youth was literary and my advancing years have been loaded with experience which reflect my cooking.