country bread

TUSCANY’S PORK FAT BITS COUNTRY BREAD

WHILE MY BRAIN WAS ANTICIPATING TYPICAL BREAD, CAME THESE POPS OF DEEPLY SAVORY AND UNMISTAKABLY CARNIVOROUS STIMULANTS.

Working mothers, I don’t know how you do it.

Those of you who follow our Instagram will know that recently, two toddlers have joined this family. Not just some harmlessly drooling, homo sapien nuggets that crawl inside your neatly confined perimeters sucking on a bottle. But two wall-eating… wood-shredding, (stuffed) animal-hunting, flying and flipping and cirque du soleil-style acrobats that, quite literally, ate and pooped the entire past week away, and then some. Hi Internet, please meet 芝麻 (Sesame), and 湯圓 (Sticky Rice Ball. SRB for short), the two Rottie-mix that we newly adopted over the past weekend.

So long, sleep. Hello, stress.

I have so much to say about them, how we met, how we overcame fear, how we took an oath. But this type of story deserves clarity and mindfulness, both not what my sleep-deprived head of glue can provide as we speak. So I’m just going to leave you today with a Tuscany-inspired country bread, speckled with salty bits of porky fatness. You heard right, a delightful discovery made in a motherly restaurant named Trattoria Dardano, nestled inside a tiny yet historical town named Cortona where we stayed. The conversation we were having without suspicion was upended by my first bite of the unexpected burst of flavors. While my brain was anticipating typical bread, came these pops of deeply savory and unmistakably carnivorous stimulants. WHAT was that!? I investigated immediately, to realized that this seemingly unremarkable bread was relentlessly laced with specks of salty fatty cured pork-bits which, I assumed, not only created these sparks of salivating porkiness, but also spread their gospel aromas into the neighboring bread-tissues when their fat was rendered during baking.

Geniale! I shouted, but in English.

I think you’ll agree, too.

Gotta go. Somebody’s eating my feet.

April 21, 2017

In All recipes, Bakery/Pastry, Vegatables

THE BLUSHING BOULE (PURPLE YAM COUNTRY BREAD)

HOW DARE I BARGING IN WITH MY “ORIENTAL” VEGETABLE, LIKE A BRUTE IMBECILE WAVING A BOX OF STUPID CRAYONS, JUST SO I CAN PAINT AN ALREADY-PERFECT LOAF OF ART, PURPLE?

So lately, if you have been paying attention, you’d notice that I’ve been somewhat, disturbingly obsessed with this color here. Hey, I swear, I didn’t know I had it in me either. I mean, com’n, pastel purple? What am I, Hanna Montana? But seriously, starting exactly 7 days ago, I swear it came at me like a never-ending nightmare too dazing and beautiful to wake up from, I kept and kept baking things – FOUR loafs of bread as we speak to be exact – obsessively colored in this gigglish hue which I was never that into even when I was 4. What’s happened to me?

To trace back steps, I must say that it started out innocently enough, as it happens to all of us, by an epidemical mental illness called PGSD – Piggish Grocery Shopping Disorder. I have been haunted by this persistent disease, which I have no doubt that I’ve gotten from my mother, for much longer than this ever-expanding body of mine can endure. On my weekly shopping routine, online as I should also point out, any promotion too friendly or a banner too distracting, can trigger a behavioural mechanism that causes me to literally… rob their entire inventory of “Buying In Bulk”. Ask my house keeper – who comes carefree to clean our apartment, but often leaves burdened with forced souvenirs of over-ripen bananas – and she’d tell you that I need help.

However, it’s one thing to let my disorder roam free as long as it’s within the premise of A) Preservative-laiden, edible mummies that last forever like 6 stacks of Pringles, or B) Guilt-tripped purchases on healthy fruits and vegetables like a dozen avocados or 4 Hawaiian pineapples (did I mention there are only TWO of us). But it’s something else entirely when it spills over into the category of perishable, filling, and ass-expanding starchy root-vegetables like… 5 whole pounds of Vietnamese purple yams.

But you guessed it. That was exactly what happened. My PGSD had led me into an unending supply of baked purple yams that, before long, I knew I had to put those purple yams somewhere else faster than they could start sprouting and turn my apartment into Molly’s backyard.