April 09, 2007
Pasqua 2007: Firenze
This Easter weekend, Robert and I ran away to Firenze. Unfortunately, Robert was feeling poorly and by Friday evening, when we arrived at the Alberghino, he'd developed a fever.
After spending a delirious Friday night in bed, Robert felt somewhat better on Saturday morning to go on a relaxed walkabout. It was perhaps a blessing in disguise, because it we ended up taking things easy and discovered the quieter, untouristy parts of Firenze.
Firenze
I think Firenze should be renamed to "Little America" or "Little Britain" during Easter weekend. Il centro storico was full of domestic and foreign tourists. On Easter Sunday, you can clearly differentiate the Italians from the tourists: the Italians were dressed impeccably in their immaculate Sunday best. The tourists were all either L.L Bean catalogue variety or MTV Springbreak special; unfortunately, not all dependent on age.
It's a lovely city, but it's way too touristy. Just as I hated London during the summer tourist season, and why I prefer Rotterdam over Amsterdam, I didn't like Firenze for precisely this reason. Milano can get quite touristy but I've never had shopkeepers in Milano greet me in English. Hummm, maybe I'm developing this Milano-vs-other-Italian-cities complex...
We gave the main sights a miss and headed to Giardino Boboli. First tip of the day: queues to Palazzo Pitti and the main entrance of Giardino Boboli can get extremely long. If you go up Corso San Giorgio to where Giardino Boboli and Bardini neighbour one another, there is another entrance with a biglietteria and hardly anyone queues there.
Robert and I lay on the grassy hill overlooking Palazzo Pitti and Firenze. It was wonderful and we fell asleep in the sun like lazy house cats. The park started to fill up around lunchtime, so we left and went to Giardino Bardini, which was smaller and quieter and had an equally stunning view of Firenze.
Sunday morning, we went to the Duomo to see the Scoppio del Carro, an Easter ritual of blowing up an elaborate wagon decorated just for this purpose. Loud bangs, lots of smoke and sparks of fireworks ensues. It was all fun and good to watch, as the crowd gets really enthusiastic. This is followed by a procession around the city center.
After a heavy Sunday lunch, Robert and I hiked up to Villa Strozzi. We found the lovely gardens and again spent some time lazing in the sun. There were families on their Sunday afternoon walks and I noticed people were a lot friendlier and interactive; there were eye contact and cheerful greetings of "Buona Pasqua" and "Buona sera".
We then walked through the hills and olive groves in the dying Sunday sun, with breathtaking views. It was such a lovely Sunday stroll that I felt better about not renting bikes and cycling through the countryside as I had originally planned.
The food
We received a lot of recommendations from friends (thank you Tango, thank you James). We did find all of those places in town, but in the end we didn't eat there. We'll save those places for our next (more) museum-oriented visit, in the fall.
Too bad Robert was still sick so he could hardly taste and smell any of the food he ate! That's torture of the worst kind (for me).
We ate wonderful Tuscan dishes: faraona all'uva con crema di patate (guinea fowl stewed in grapes on creamy potatoes), polenta con al ragu di cinghiale (polenta with ragu of wildboar), ravioli di zucca con amaretti (pumpkin ravioli with amaretti), sformato caldo di patate con ragù di carni bianche o pomodoro (a molded potato flan with a tomato and meat ragu), bistecca alla fiorentina (yay for extra-rare beef!)... Everything was SO good, I was very happy...
Back in Milano
We're still glowing from the weekend we just had... April will be a busy month with Salone del Mobile Milano and plenty of our designer friends flying in and crashing at our place... I love having friends visit...
I'm looking for our next little holiday at the end of April: we're going to Riomaggiore in Cinque Terre for 4 days! Yippeeee....
Posted by Yasmina at 09:35 PM | Comments (5)
March 23, 2007
sementes
I found this on Flickr whilst looking for papaya images. See sometimes, when I'm hit with a certain memory, I have to quickly get a visual reference and savour the emotion.
In this particular case, I was IMing with a friend in Indonesia, talking about fruit and I remember the breakfasts my father would make for me.
My father would slice papayas into blocks in a bowl. Sprinkle a little bit of sugar and squeeze fresh lime over it. Sometimes he does this before I even wake up, so he chills it in the fridge. Sometimes the bowl of papaya is already waiting for me on the dining table, but nothing really beats this feeling of opening the fridge and discovering there is this delicious bowl of papaya specially made by my father for me.
Oh man, I'm really homesick right now.
Posted by Yasmina at 02:54 PM | Comments (1)
February 06, 2007
Pastry-Eating Frenzy
I love the pastries they make in bakeries here... I swore off pastries for this week but then Eva came over this afternoon with a plateful... How can I resist?
Nearby our flat are a couple of really great panificio/pasticceria/bakeries, where we usually stock up on fresh bread (if the husband doesn't feel like making his own), get our focaccia for our soups and salads, catch a morning coffee with a freshly baked brioche, and getting seasonal pastries.
I love the selection of seasonal pastries, like chiaccere (sp?) which is a crispy fried dough sprinkled with powder sugar that you can find only during carnaval season. As well as pastries and pies that use seasonal fruits like mirtillo (blueberries) and fichi (figs) and lampone (raspberries).
Posted by Yasmina at 10:03 PM | Comments (1)
December 03, 2006
Monza, Sunday Afternoon
After waking up late on this very gray Sunday, and breakfasting on chocolate panettone, vanilla yoghurt and coffee, we caught a train to Monza. The initial idea was to walk around Parco Monza, but when we got there, we decided it was too cold and rainy to walk in the park. We ended up walking around the shopping streets instead.
We found a Citta del Sole so we bought an inflatable globe, a toy airplane, a wooden car and an Il Piccolo Principe memory game for X. On the phone, X asks us for a toy hammer... but I can hear his mom (my sister) in the background shouting to get him educational toys instead. So it's a sort of compromise.
We keep thinking we must go to Indonesia and see him before he gets too big (to be tickled, held upside-down, spun around and all that good stuff). We spoke to him on the phone yesterday and he keeps asking us where we are. Hence the idea of the inflatable globe, so he can see where we are in relation to his position.
Anyway, I hope next weekend it will be sunny so we can go to the park. :-)
Posted by Yasmina at 07:18 PM | Comments (1)
July 26, 2006
under the tuscan sun
edit, 060727: I'm back in Milano but only for a night, as tomorrow we are catching a 9 am flight to Amsterdam, where Robert and I will be chilling out with our friends for a week... Ciao ciao...
Wow, what a week! I'm loving it here... meeting interesting people, eating yummy food, waking up to the amazing view out of my bedroom window, even the heat is not as intense as Milano, we get cool breezes at night. We slept with the windows open and one night ended up with a bat flapping round our livingroom, poor thing...
The presentation went well, I thought. We always have to present last so on Monday I felt anxious all day, but once I slip into the presentation mode, I just get comfortable. Feedback was positive so we're happy.
Last night we went to Siena, to Piazza del Campo, where we had a refreshing apperitivo *make mine a mojito* and watched people. Dinner was absolutely amazing! I had a Tuscan specialty pasta: pici, which is like spaghetti but thick. Pici all'anatra for starters. Then I had veal with chestnuts.... Ooooohhhhh heavenly veal with chesnuts... No picture would do justice... The veal was perfect, rare and coated in a super-duper-delizioso (chestnut?) sauce, with pieces of tender chestnuts.... omg, to die for...
More news when I get back to Milano. Right now, I need to prepare for this afternoon's presentation :)
Posted by Yasmina at 01:21 PM | Comments (1)
July 16, 2006
bread porn: lazy sunday bread
Saturday afternoon is usually the time when Robert and I go round the neighborhood getting our weekly shopping done. Sure, during the week, we nip to the shops once or twice to get fresh ingredients, but Saturday is when we do the full-neighborhood tour: the greengrocers, the butcher, the supermarket, the bakery, the gelateria.
The promise of Robert's homemade bread, made us skip the bakery entirely yesterday afternoon. Whether it's raisin bread, or croissant, or plain white bread, Robert's homemade breads is always made with love and always comes out perfect...
Delicious bread porn by Robert on Flickr...
Posted by Yasmina at 02:57 PM | Comments (2)
May 06, 2006
eating my way back to italy from indo
OMG, that must have been the longest journey I ever made from Asia to Europe. I left Jakarta on Friday, 12.20 Indonesian time, arriving in Singapore at 14.55. My Singapore-Amsterdam flight didn't leave until 23.45, so I went over to Thalia and Ari's place, hung out a bit before going to meet Rani and going to East Coast Park to eat some chilli crabs and other yummy crustaceans. The food was super-duper good; the crabs were perfect and tender and spicy, the prawns and squid crunchy, the kailan not too soggy, not too crunchy in their garlicky deliciousness.
I was in my cut-off jeans shorts, sandals, linen tunic, drinking beer by the beach on Friday night. Some 13 hours later, when I arrived in Amsterdam, it was 4C outside! Eeek! It was 07.15 when I arrived, and my flight to Milano was at 19.20. I deposited my luggage in the lockers and made my way to meet Gerard.
Gerard was so sweet, picking me up at the train station and taking me to his parents' house so I could have a nice hot shower and a nap. I felt terrible for barging into their homes like that. I wish Gerard and I had more time to hang out together, but he had loads of work on, so after a while he drove me to Rotterdam, to Laszlo and Lesh's.
Laszlo and Lesh's new apartment is supercool, light and airy with skylights and the double glass doors leading to the terrace balcony. I was happy to have had the time to hang out and catch up with Laszlo because we didn't manage when I was in NL last March.
We then walked into the town center to see what celebrations were going on. The stroll through their neighbourhood was a great experience: so much to see and touch and smell. Vendors were barbecuing lamb sausages in the street, various shops selling Afros and incense and plastic multi-colored beads.
We stopped off at this Turkish sweet shop where we bought pistachio and nut-honey pastries. That shop was fab! Imagine, a shop that just sells delicious Turkish sweets. I could have bought entire trays of sweets.
In town we visited Lisa and Damian, who had a market stand selling secondhand stuff for the day. We drank beer and went on a walkabout through the secondhand market. There were some nice pieces but also a lot of junk. I ate a dodgy bratwurst sandwich in the center of town, and we are the sweets we bought earlier from the Turkish shop and they were so so so good I wish we'd bought more.
Around five I got back to the airport only to find my flight was delayed till 23.00. Buses from Bergamo to Milano don't run that late so I rescheduled to a morning flight and stayed over at my parents-in-law. I ate a lot of my mother-in-law's potato salad, which is the best potato salad, I swear, drank Hoegaarden and smoked eel sandwiches. I was sad in the delay of seeing Robert again but at least my belly was full of yummies.
Sunday morning I finally made it to Milano. Boy and girl together again :)
Posted by Yasmina at 07:28 PM
December 13, 2005
thomas + chocolate-chip muffins
baking chocolate chip muffins with marie and thomas. marie downloaded a really yumm muffin recipe from the internet and they came out really delicious! light and fluffy and chocolatey!
robert and i came over with bagel sandwiches to have lunch at marie's. she and david had just had a second baby, a little brother to thomas, called oliver. i should have photos of oliver but he was sleeping so i didn't take any. he was such a quiet baby, sleeping in his pram in the living room, even though we were cooking and eating together and thomas was running around the apartment hyperactive on chocolate-chip muffins.
Posted by Yasmina at 11:38 PM
December 11, 2005
'tis the season to be baking
last week i went over to visit cathrine and little ebbe and spent an afternoon baking traditional norwegian gingerbread cookies. it was fun! although we were a bit silly for forgetting to buy any cake icing to decorate the cookies with. we did have cookie cutters though, so we made different shape cookies.
the cookies came out really well, and i've been munching on them whilst enjoying my afternoon tea. it's been so cold lately outside, and homemade gingerbread cookies and herbal tea is the perfect companion for when i am curled on the couch, reading my new books: jonathan safran foer's "extremely loud & incredibly close" and banana yoshimoto's "hardboiled | hard luck".
Posted by Yasmina at 10:06 PM
December 10, 2005
foodswap round 2
yayness! i received my foodswap package from adam in nyc! god knows how long it's been sitting on my desk at work, but someone kindly informed robert so he picked it up for me! :-)
he sent some spanish biscuits (galetas), some salt olives from chinatown, blueberry farm lemon tea, pumpkin pancake cookies, and a box of VERY LUSCIOUS maraschino cherries in fondant and milk chocolate. omg, heaven!!! thank you SO much, adam!
p.s. i hope my secret receiver receives their package soon! i sent it on november 25th and the post office said it would take 5-6 working days and it is not yet at its destination, boo hoo! or maybe the receiver is too busy to post? :-(
Posted by Yasmina at 12:42 PM | Comments (2)
December 08, 2005
a present from patricia
last week we received this package, from patricia, via laszlo, via ozgur. what happened to regular snail mail? ;-)
it was very very sweet of patricia to send us this. the packet contained really yummy swedish caramel candy. they're soft and chewy, like the english toffee alexis used to bring me, and these have a subtle hint of some unfamiliar spice to me: a mix of cardamom and cinnamon?
in any case, i've been munching on them non-stop, even in class, whilst teaching my students. and no, i did not offer my students any candy, hehe... rude, i know... muse learn. to. share. yumminess. with. others. i. must. play. nice.
Posted by Yasmina at 04:11 PM | Comments (1)
November 14, 2005
italian dinner at cathrine's
i was visiting cathrine and ebbe this week, after work. it was good to catch up with her and finally meet ebbe. he is so cute! he has a signature way of quivering his lower lip and chin. adorable!
anders was in china for a business trip so i think cathrine found it hard to be with ebbe all the time. i cooked dinner: a simple insalata caprese and risotto alla funghi, and passionfruit sorbet for dessert. yummy.
now that i am off work, i can visit cathrine during the day on weekdays, yippee! so next time i can stay for longer and we can chat longer too.
food recipes below. now, i modified the recipes a bit, so don't take the recipes below as the real italian deal.
insalata caprese: slice up some veldsla, fresh basil leaves, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese. add pepper and salt to taste. drizzle with extra virgin olive oil. i usually make this only with basil, tomato and mozzarella but i had some veldsla with me so i added that too.
risotto alla funghi: in a frying pan, heat some olive oil. add finely diced onions and garlic. add arborio rice and fry for 5 minutes until the rice is evenly covered in the oil. i use 300 ml water for 200 grams rice. boil the water in the kettle. add 100 ml to a pot, add chicken stock, and the rice. cook over a medium heat, whilst stirring constantly. the rice takes about 30 mins to cook. so just stir and add the water till it's done.
chop 400 grams of mixed mushrooms. i use at least 2 kinds of mushrooms: usually kastanje, button and oesterzwammen. re-use the frying pan to cook the mushrooms; this should take about 5 mins. add the mushrooms to the finished rice, stir well, and sprinkle with parmesan cheese. enjoy!
Posted by Yasmina at 01:18 AM
November 06, 2005
robert bakes bread (again)
like i said on my flickr entry, what did i do to deserve a supercool husband who makes perfect bread???
this morning robert made bread again. he made a beautiful loaf of white bread, which is unusual for him because he loves brown bread and we rarely eat white bread. but i'm not complaining! this loaf of bread was just perfect! crispy crust, with a pillow-soft center, yummm, i ate it while it was still fresh from the oven, the butter just melting on the surface, and i had my favorite Bonne Maman strawberry jam on it as well.
lemon curd and ginger jam would also taste delicious on this, i think. must get them next time i'm grocery shopping :)
Posted by Yasmina at 07:23 PM | Comments (2)
October 29, 2005
foodswapee
woo hoo! i got the best package ever from anna in chicago! :)
she sent a huge box full of yummy stuff: korean soda, japanese marshmallows, peanut butter M&M chocolate bar, Mrs. Field's chocolate chips for cooking, French-market coffee, Filipino spices for dishes, polvoron, childhood favorite cereal Cap'N Crunch, corn cracklings, and much more! all these goodies, just in time for halloween!
i am so happy!
who wants to join for Round 2? christmas is coming up, so that'd be a nice theme, or a nice excuse to exchange food gifts :)
Posted by Yasmina at 03:19 PM | Comments (1)
October 25, 2005
robert. the baker.
*well i thought i could write about bread instead of the dutch design week in this installment* :)
last weekend, robert baked a really lovely loaf of raisin bread! i couldn't eat enough of it! and i kept taking photos of it too! it was so tasty, and so soft and fluffy, like a pillow. it was great to eat it warm, thinly spread with butter. so good.
i fell in love with the bread, and all over again with the man :)
Posted by Yasmina at 06:27 AM | Comments (5)
September 18, 2005
daily dose of fruit
Ever since Robert bought me a blender last May, it's been so easy to get our daily dose of fruit. I make a fruit smoothie most mornings, or as a healthy drink before dinner. Since it's been summer, we've had an abundance of summer fruits like strawberries, frambozen/raspberries, blackberries and I've been making lots of berry smoothies.
My personal favorite is a strawberry yoghurt shake: 500 grams of fresh strawberries, 1 cup vanilla yoghurt, 1 cup very cold milk, 1 tablespoon aloe vera. I get pure aloe vera extract from the health shop and it's good for your digestion and immune system.
Another favorite of mine is the mango-mint-and-aloe-vera smoothie: 1 mango, 1 handful of fresh mint leaves, 1/2 cup of yoghurt, 1/2 cup of milk, 1 tablespoon aloe vera. Yumm yumm! :)
Mangoes can get expensive if you buy them at the Albert Heijn or supermarkets, but I buy mine from the Tuesday market in the centrum, where I can get fresh mangoes and avocadoes, for 80p or €1 each. Sometimes I also get tinned mangoes from the Chinese toko and add the sweet syrup into the blender with all the other ingredients.
The Tuesday market in town is the best place to get fresh fruits. Satsumas, mandarins, avocadoes, summer berries, cherries, etc. I know I must sound really domesticated but hooray for fresh fruit smoothies! :-)
Posted by Yasmina at 09:11 PM | Comments (3)
September 10, 2005
norwegian cheese
gudbrandsdalsost. norwegian brown goat's cheese. so so good. it's mild, tangy, sweet and buttery, and just melts in your mouth. it's like caramel.
the first time i had it was in 1997. i was in manhattan visiting my norwegian relatives and this was served after dinner. so yumm!
the last few months i've been working with cathrine, who is norwegian, and last weekend she went to the norwegian shop in rotterdam and bought me some lovely lovely norwegian cheese! how nice is that?
she also only recently found out about the norwegian shop, and i'm quite curious to see it. based on her description, it sounded like a norwegian log cabin (inside a former church), in the middle of rotterdam. intriguing... well, i'm in rotterdam tomorrow so if they are open, i'll have a look.
Posted by Yasmina at 01:02 PM | Comments (7)
September 07, 2005
sushi wushi night with robert
robert needed to get some more content for his TV concept at work so we went to the sushi place in kleine berg in the hopes of getting some footage.
we're regulars at the sushi place, and the proprietor let us film them make the sushi, so we got some cool shots. :)
we ordered a california temaki roll (hand-roll sushi with avocado, tuna, mayo), oshinko maki, futomaki, and a mini sushi-combo for robert, comprising of sake+tuna+crab nigiri and kappa maki.
after that, we ate some beef teriyaki, fried rice and a bowl of ramen with thinly sliced beef. for dessert we had green tea ice cream. :)
happy happy, belly full of lovely food. toothache all forgotten, hehe.
*tapi rasanya masih ganjil kalau mengunyah dengan bagian kanan mulut, rasanya ada yang ngeganjel*
Posted by Yasmina at 11:13 PM | Comments (8)
May 13, 2005
chocolate crepes
Posted by Yasmina at 05:41 PM
May 12, 2005
chocolate cake
Posted by Yasmina at 05:54 PM
April 23, 2005
laszlo's bread
lesh had a little housewarming party in her new flat in rotterdam last weekend and this is the picture of the bread loaf laszlo made. :)
Posted by Yasmina at 12:31 PM
January 27, 2005
tiramisu i love you
tiramisu, i love you, i do, i do, will you marry me?
Posted by Yasmina at 12:14 AM
January 25, 2005
hainan chicken rice
i wanted to make bubur ayam (rice porridge with chicken and spring onions) but decided it took too long so made hainan chicken rice. i miss my mom; she makes the best hainan chicken rice.
Posted by Yasmina at 08:11 PM
January 09, 2005
spinach quiche for lunch
my sunday lunch. yumm!
Posted by Yasmina at 11:10 PM
October 13, 2004
naughty chocolate cake
Posted by Yasmina at 09:15 PM
September 02, 2004
potato smilies
Posted by Yasmina at 09:27 AM
August 15, 2004
dessert at duck king
Posted by Yasmina at 06:15 PM
May 24, 2004
dim sum lunch with fu ho
lunched with fuho today. dimsum on left is singapore-style fried turnip cakes and on the right is taro cakes -- yummy! i love going to lunch with fu, because when loads of other people come, they always end up ordering huge meals instead of nice little dimsum dishes.
Posted by Yasmina at 10:14 PM
