17 Thursday May 2018
Posted in casa azahar, cats, throw back thursday
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#TBT Loki Longshanks, seven years ago. He never did grow into those toes, thank goodness. Because he’s quite massive enough, a long & tall 7 kilo bundle of lurve. This one is for Deb, who has been missing her big hunk of dude.
15 Tuesday May 2018
Posted in azahars kitchen, casa azahar, cats, home
They’re heeeeere…. lovely locally grown asparagus. Probably my favourite vegetable (if I had to choose). I’ve been reading about asparagus steamers lately, long tall pots especially made to perfectly cook your long tall asparagus. Seriously? Imagine having enough cupboard space for this sort of thing. I have always lightly steamed my asparagus lying down in a frying pan, with just a bit of water and a perforated lid. And of course char-grilled asparagus is also fab.
Then recently I saw a couple of recipes mentioned about braising asparagus, which seemed to me like the best of both worlds. You get the freshness of steaming with the extra added flavour of the braising liquids. So I decided to give it a try. Here you see asparagus tossed with a 50-50 blend of butter and olive oil and cooked with garlic, salt and a bit of crushed chilis. Heaven. I ended up with a bit too much butter/oil but will know better next time.
The only drawback with this delicious dish is that it’s too rich for the cats, who also happen to ADORE fresh asparagus (the same as Azar did). When they smell it cooking they start going into a very vocal frenzy, so while I was braising my asparagus in garlic and whatnot, I had to steam a few stalks in water just for the cats.
What’s your favourite vegetable?
14 Monday May 2018
Posted in casa azahar, cats, home
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By now we have all seen how Morcilla is obsessed with her own image in mirrors, and she often frantically paws at the glass, as if trying to get to the super cute cat on the other side. But now she has learned a new trick… that she can also see ME when she looks in the mirror. I didn’t notice this at first, and thought she was just admiring her own reflection as always. But then I saw that her eyes were looking right at me! Is this normal?
Out of all the cats I’ve had in Spain, only Morcilla has seemed to recognize that the image in the mirror is another cat (still not sure if she knows it’s actually her). But to also recognize The Human sitting across the room? Does she know it’s me? Sometimes I’ll wave at her, at which point she abruptly stops looking in the mirror and turns to look at me, as if to see if I’m also waving. Interesting…
07 Monday May 2018
Posted in casa azahar, home, homecooking
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This past weekend I decided to finally break in my lovely mortar & pestle (that I bought two and a half years ago!!!) by making some pesto using basil from my new kitchen window herb garden As you can see… it didn’t quite turn out to be pesto. First of all I didn’t have any pine nuts, so I substituted cashews. And that would have been fine except my little basil plant didn’t have quite enough on it for the amount of nuts, garlic and parmesan I’d prepared. So it ended up being a sort of basil alioli, which was actually very tasty, but not quite pesto. Am now impatiently waiting for basil plant to grow…
04 Friday May 2018
Posted in casa azahar, home
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Viveros La María
Back in the old Casa Azahar I had plans for a small rooftop herb garden, but somehow never got around to it. I guess because I never actually used the rooftop for anything other than drying my laundry. I tried having meals up there, including a few nice BBQs, but frankly it was so much hassle bringing everything up the stairs that it was more bother than it was worth. Also, for more than half the year it was either too hot or too cold to sit outside… and so aside from hanging up laundry and watering the plants left behind by a previous tenant, I almost never went up there.
But the first time I looked around the new Casa Azahar I thought how lovely it would be to have a little herb garden on my kitchen balcony. And yesterday I finally took the first step to making that happen. I popped over to Viveros La María and picked up some parsley, basil and cilantro. Now I just need to repot them and figure out a way to hang them from the balcony railing. Normally I would have them facing inward, but then I wouldn’t be able to open or close the wooden shutters. So the plan is to have them hanging on the outside of the railing… just have to work out how to safely do that. But look! My first ever mini herb garden!
