Cultural,cuisine.... and cakes

one of the night sights in Vienna

oberlaa cafe

Summer by Arcimboldo

My day has started very early today and I am very lucky as the sun is shinning brightly with the temperature around 7 degree Celcius. I have decided to start my day by walking to Naschmarkt. It is the biggest open air market in Vienna and you can find almost everything from exotic fruits to spices.... almost everything. I saw some durians, rambutan, mangis and I even bought half a kilo of buah mata kucing.

I later walked to the Kuntshistorisches Museum ( Fine Arts Museum). This is the treasure of Austria. The museum is located in one of the royal palaces and of course as the royal palace of the Austrian Habsburg Empire, it is definitely grandiose. I chose to see only the picture gallery which consists of the masterpieces of European paintings of the Italian, Flemming, Spanish,French and German starting from the 15th Century like Canaletto, Vermeer,Titan, Van Dyck, Durer to name a few.

I came here to see Giuseppe Arcimboldo, an Italian artist who was the imperial court painter. He was the designer for weddings and tournaments for the Emperor (could he be called the wedding planner?). The most famous painting is entitled 'Summer' dated 1563. That painting is considered as 'strange' and comical to certain extent....take a look at the photo. The beauty of the paintings is so overwhelming especially with the Flemming paintings as big as more than 5x6 metres... like the painting of Frans Snyders with the theme of 'treasure of the sea'. That painting shows that how brilliant the artist was to paint 'still life' of belangkas,sturgeon,cuttlefish,lobsters.... i have counted and there are almost 30 types of sea creatures in that painting and they look so real, you can actually touch them! (the painting is almost 400 years old)

I left the museum with my heart filled with artistic emotions but I am ready for my..... cake adventure. I went to the Cafe Oberlaa... a historic cafe and I tried the schoko vanille torte which means chocolate cake with chocolate and vanilla mousse. Again the Austrian cake has won my heart and the taste of the light chocolate mousse together with the vanilla mousse filling really made me smile throughout the day.....

The Art of giving gifts.....Vienna

Cafe Central

One of the palaces

Talking about the art of giving gifts...I am a bit lousy in this matter. However, I think the giving gift should be fun. So, this holiday season, I personally think that it is appropriate that I should receive gift (especially from the beloved ones) something without 'physical material'....so, I decided that going on a short winter break to Vienna is an ideal gift for me.

Vienna, compact royal city with so many royal palaces in so small square meter area (as compared to Paris, for example).However, my idea to come to Vienna is to taste my real 'sweet tooth' buds. Vienna is full with antique and modern cafes, konditorei and pastry shops. Sacher torte and apple strudel are their forte but I think there are plenty of other pastries and cakes to try.

This is my second day in the city and after going to a splendid Impressionist exhibition in Albertina, I decided to take a coffee break at the Central Cafe. Central cafe is a historic cafe which was built in the early 19th century. The setting is very luxury with velvet sofa and high vaulted ceiling with huge chandeliers. I am trying the truffle torte (simple layered hazelnut cake) today.... with strong coffee and cream.... the taste lingers in my mouth for quite a while.

Sub zero temperature

Beautiful view at Monte Fogliame with the snow on the ground and blue sky.

We are experiencing sub zero temperature at the moment. Frost is everywhere and the road is very icy. Yesterday, after lunch my friend and I decided to take a drive to the hill area which is called Monte Fogliame. It is absolutely beautiful, with the snow on the ground and the sunny and blue sky. I drove all around the hill and the Lake Vico too. The view was absolutely spectacular.

The whole Europe is experiencing sub zero temperature and thick snow is causing the train Eurostar (London-Paris-Brussels) to suspend their service for the third day . The thick snow is sweeping through out the North European countries with North of France, Belgium, Poland and the Netherlands are badly affected.

My kitchen garden is covered with frost. Surprisingly my endives and red raddichio are saved with freezing cold. It looks like they love this cold and icy weather!

COLD.....br,br,br...

The cold is here. The temperature goes down very fast and faster as usual as Christmas approaches. Early in the morning, the mercury goes down to -1 and seldom goes up to 5 during the day.

The Siberian cold air is sweeping through out Europe and The Eiffel Tower was closed 2 days ago because of heavy snow. We have to bundle up with layers and layers of clothes/sweaters..... and my poor feet are as usual very cold too despite thick socks and proper shoes.

However, when the sun shines I could feel the softness of cool air in my lungs and nose, that really feels good.

Brainless creatures....

I have received 3 small containers full with brainless creatures last weekend from a friend of mine, Santhia. He is an Indian Malaysian who is currently working in an Italian company near Rome. Together with his wife, Mag, we met to have lunch in the center of Rome (it was quite a nice Lebanese food) before he gave me these priceless presents... worms.These brainless creatures are very essential to the Earth. They work wonders through their digestion and reproductive system with their main role to enrich the soil. Without these worms the quality of soil can be absolutely poor.

Apparently Santhia has been breeding these worms for quite sometime in his compost box. When I first went to their house for Deepavali dinner, I saw the soil of his strawberry vases is absolutely black and the plants are full with flowers and fruits and from far I could see that they are very happy.Immediately I knew that he has worms inside those pots (he has many of them)!

After quite a hearty Lebanese lunch that afternoon and together with a good cup of cappuccino, I rushed back home with 3 containers of worms in my bag.When I arrived home, straight away I put one of them in the flower bed. The next day, I transfered another one to my compost box and with some high hopes to get more worms, I am breeding the rest of them in a big black vase with some kitchen waste.

Santhia is absolutely a nice person and he really has 'green fingers' and gave me a lot of tips on roses like putting blended banana skin around the roses to encourage more flowers! Surely I will not forget to do that in March and I hope by February, I will have more worms in my garden. Thanks again Santhia and Mag!

The Leaning Pisa Tower

We had the opportunity of taking the children to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa last weekend. Luckily enough, the weather on Saturday was very pleasant. It had been raining non stop for a few days before that. The journey to Pisa took less than 4 hours since we took the highway to get there. Since we were around Pisa around 2.30pm, we decided to go to Lucca. Lucca is such a pretty walled town. The wall is about 5 meters thick and circling around the town. There is one thing that is really surpising to me in Lucca.... the cost of parking the car is 10 cent per hour! If you want to park for 3 hours and more, it will cost you only 30 cent! It is such unbelievable! The cheapest parking in the town around Rome is 50 cent for half an hour.

We spent a night in Pisa and took the children to see the tower the next day. The tower is really spectacular... coming from the entrance suddenly you see it right infront of you, the white marble tower which has been the landmark of Italy for centuries, leaning to the right..... that is beautiful! That tower has been tilting right after the fifth year it was built in the 13th Century. This is due to the clay soil underneath the tower as the location is also near the river. The tower became famous also because of the gravity test done by Galileo Galilei. There were numerous restoration works to the tower and i think it has turned 'bleached white' because of that!

Kitchen Garden by late November

curly endives with red endives

My kitchen garden looks fabulous at this time of the year. I can say that all the vegetables are at their optimum health condition. My romaine lettuce, endives, puntarelle....broccoli are simply looking great. The weather is warm too! You could never ask for more for this temperate weather at this time of the year. This is the best autumn weather! The colors of the trees are changing every minute and they are losing faster too. The colors are so intense like red, gold,brown, russet etc... with all earth tones, you have to feel the abundance whenever you see all of them through out the day.The beauty is so 'revealing', you can actually feel joy deep inside you.

OLIVE PICKING

The time has come to picking olives. It is the time for therapeutic adventure..... having quiet time to yourself, 'melurut dengan tangan' all the olives from the branches could give opportunity to reflect on our lives. The process is very slow and takes time. Therefore, the actual price that we pay for a bottle of olive oil at the supermarket is never the real price because this industry is heavily subsidised by the European union. This is one of the heritage industries for the Mediteranean countries.This tree already existed since ancient time and they are very resistant to weather and never lose leaves in winter.

The weather is absolutely warm to pick olives now. It is really a blessing because a couple of years ago, we had to brave ourselves in almost freezing weather to pick all the olives around our house. Usually olive picking is almost a 'family or national affair'. Almost everywhere, we could see and hear people gathering together to pick olives. The whole family and extended family will spend a few days together for this activity and this could be fun.... picnic under the olive trees with warm tea and a few slices of chocolate cake or having warm lunch too!

The olives will then be taken to the 'frantoio' where they will be pressed. The quality of oil depends on various factors, like weather, location of the tress etc. The quantity of olives this year is much less than the previous year but the quality of oil is superb and we have almost 20 litres of 'olio olive extra vergine'.

Olive oil is like tea, it tastes better not by the process of 'aging'. They are best consumed as soon as possible, like other oils too. If the oil is kept for too long, it will lose its taste. The Italians like to consume new oil on the bruschetta. The taste of olive oil differs from region to region too. The oil that comes from the Southern Regions and certain places from Central Regions are very strong and sometimes can be quite 'kelat' and others can be very mildly strong and delicate.

The rain does not seem to stop. It is really autumn and the weather is rather variable. I could not do much in my kitchen garden or flower garden. Before the rainy season started last week, i managed to prepare the beds for the spring bulbs. Clearing all the weeds was not an easy task but i managed to work the soil too. By the time I want to plant the new bulbs of tulips and daffodils, the rain came and it looks like I have to wait until the soil becomes dry.

I normally plant all the bulbs gradually so that by the spring time, I will have the succession of colors in 4 weeks. I will try to plant all the bulbs from now until right before Christmas.

My kitchen garden looks very well, eventhough the weeds are growing like feeding them with high dose of minerals and vitamins. One of the weeds that is very useful is nettle. Nettle stings, but it contains a lot of iron and very useful for detoxification. Making frittata (omellete)using nettle is divine and simple. This year, I am allowing a lot of space for the nettles and i will have loads of them for my detoxification process!

curly endives with some spring oninons


After a few days of cold snap and thermal shock, my kitchen garden is taking back its regular 'winter shape'. Sicilian broccoli, endives and others plants are surving well through the first round of cold. I presume they can cope well with this sudden change of temperature!
I have sowed some peas and planted some garlic too! Since rotation of crops is very important in organic planting, my peas and garlic are in the new beds and I hope they are going to do well together with romaine lettuce and poppies!

Thermal shock

The temperature has gone down drastically, leaving us gasping for more air. Thermal shock!The difference between this morning and the day before is more than 10 degrees! The temperature has gone down to 4 degrees at around 7.30 am in the morning with some thick ice on my windscreen (it is quite unlikely to have ice in the middle of October) It was so warm a few days ago and suddenly with 30 minutes storm, it has changed the weather completely. My body can't cope with this sudden change of temperature and so does my brain.

I couldn't resist to see what happened to my kitchen garden as I just planted light green broccoli and salads a few days agos..... I think the plants are coping very well with this sudden cold and my kitchen garden is saved at the moment.

Magic Nuts!

soapberry

Take a closer look at these nuts! They look like 'dried mata kucing' that we can buy at the local shop but I call these 'magic nuts!' because it works like magic! These are sapindus mukarossi. It is a type of nut that contains active natural soap ingredient and biodegradable too.

I have found these nuts at a local bioshop and did not think twice to get them.They are also called 'soapberry'. These nuts are natural laundry soap and by using only 5 or 7 nuts (put them in a small bag which is given together) and put that small bag together with your laundry. Of course the end result of your washing won't smell like lavander or wild rose but they are absolutely smell fresh! The best thing about this soapberry is that you can reuse them for 2 or 3 times! You can get approximately 50 washings just from 250 grams of these nuts. If you like your laundry to have sweet smell, just put a few drops of essential oil together with these magic nuts!

Autumn/Spring Kitchen Garden

The day is still warm and in fact it is warmer than usual. It is early October and the sun is still scorching hot in the middle of the day and the temperature can go up to 28 degrees Celcius.

I planted more or less the same vegetables like last year but without beets. However, I planted more red cabbages, Italian parsley, Sicilian broccoli, romaine lettuce and 'puntarelle'. Puntarelle is a family of chicory and is best eaten raw with garlic and anchovies. It is an early spring salad and you have to cut them in small strips and put in a bowl of cold water. Then, these small strips will curl up and become very crunchy. I love to clean and cut them into small strips. Eventhough certain people might think that cutting and cleaning puntarelle is more suitable for old ladies with some spare time to spend, I think it is so 'therapeutic' and even relaxing. I love to see them curling up in the water.

The organization of my kitchen garden this year is more 'linear' with some flower bulbs in between the vegetable rows like tulips and daffodils. Last year the daffodils were extremely spectacular and I am planning to extend the space for them this time. My kitchen garden will blend with many spring flowers and usually it will have an explosion of colours in early April to late May.

This year, I am planning to sow various types of poppies too, (I am a BIG fan of poppies!) like Iceland poppy( I am not that lucky with this poppy) , American poppy and opium poppy and I will put them together with the peas!

I love to do the winter/spring kitchen garden each year as it so rewarding. Working with the nature and observe how it works wonders and only through preserverance and patience, we can see the abundance. However strong my wishes are, there are still a lot of work to do here. Weeding really makes me feel so helpless. It is such unending task. But, as for now I have a few dahlias to admire!

Pretty Peppers

Peppers. There are so many shapes and colours. Most of them are mildly hot, 'piccante' (hot), extremely 'piccante' or even sweet. Talking about sweet peppers, there is one particular red pepper which is also beautiful! Beautiful in the sense that the shape is like a miniature pumpkin and it is also shining red in colour! I have found these peppers at the vegetable stall last week and i thought that they were piccante. This is because there is another type of pepper which is similar to this one but smaller in size. They are absolutely so hot, you cannot even feel your tongue when you eat them.
I took these pretty peppers home and just put them together with other fruits. It took some days for me to decide what i was going to do with them. My son thought that those peppers were some exotic fruits!

Then, i decided to bake them stuffed simply with tuna flakes (from the tin), parsley, garlic and tomatoes. We had them for lunch and dinner and found out that those peppers were not only pretty but very sweet too. Together with the tomatoes, they make a perfect combinations!

Eid ul Fitri

Wish all of our friends the best of Eid ul Fitri al Mubarak. We hope that this year's celebration of Eid is more meaningful with families and friends. We also should not forget the other Muslims who are not able to celebrate Eid in the safe environment like in the Occupied Area of Gaza.

On the morning of Eid, i went to the mosque for the 9.30am prayer and witnessed the most colorful and diversified the Muslim population in Rome. Outside the mosque, there were so many stalls mainly from the Middle East selling so many delicacies like kebab, sweets and gourmet specialties.

At about 1 pm, we invited our Malaysian friends who reside in the Eternal City for lunch at our house. I cooked laksa johor, lontong (with sambal sotong), kuah sate' and rendang. I even cooked my 'nasi impit' myself. I know that my cookings could not compare with my mother's back home but i think she is proud to know that i cooked everything from scratch. I know that this year my mother prepared 'sup kaki lembu', which is one of her specialties for hariraya. Apparently this year she only bought 4 kaki lembu because she couldn't get hold of 8 like last year!

My mother's sup kaki lembu is so unlike the other soups that she usually prepares. The preparation is absolutely meticulous and tedious. However, the end result is S.U.P.E.R.B!

Autumn Fruits

I am blessed to able to live in Italy; a land of abundance. We still have a lot of fruits in our garden like figs, plums, apples and grapes during this time of the year. In fact I can say that we have a lot of fruits throughout the year except in March and April.

The figs ( buah tin) are simply delicious.We have at least 4 types of figs in the garden and each year they give us loads of fresh fruits. These figs are very soft and that is why they can't be exported and they also have short shelf life. Figs can simply be eaten right after you pick them or if you like, it can be eaten with Italian country bread. I am not a fan of bread, so just simply pop in my mouth is the best way to do. Or, if you love cheese, figs can be eaten with 'ricotta' (goat cheese) with some honey drizzled on top.

We have different kinds of grapes too. I am not so keen on grapes because i am so used to eat 'seedless' Californian grapes (much to my husband's disappointment). However, the grapes that we have in the garden will keep well right until December each year. It is nice to eat fresh grapes from the garden during that time of the year when there is nothing we can eat from the garden. I have never seen the seedless grapes so far, but i can find the grapes which are called 'pizzutello', which almost do not have any seeds.

Plums! Lovely. We have so many varieties of plums in the garden and we have different plum each month from June to September each year! The Italians give many strange names to their plums like 'coscia di monaca' (nun's thigh), giocce d'oro (the gold drop) and many others.

However, we are not lucky with peaches. Peach tree needs a lot of chemical treatment and since we do not give any unorganic substance to our trees, i am just happy with some small fruits that we have.

The day is getting shorter and the temperature is getting cooler especially during the day. Autumn is obviously the best time for me!

Ssssss..nnnaaakkkeee.....

Dear friends... nampak apa tu kat gambar sebelah sana? This is a real picture and nothing was added or omitted to the image. It is a real 4 m ular sawa!

We have found this 'ular sawa' on the last evening before my children left for Italy. We went out for dinner at the Putrajaya Seafood Restaurant and on the way to that restaurant, while we we walking on the deck of the corriodor suddenly Dina said to me, so calmly ..'mummy, it is snake...' just simply pointed to that creature which at that time was only like half a meter. I am a 'geli' type of person and quickly called the restaurant workers. One of the workers asked me about the length of the snake and i simply said that it is not that big and probably only a meter long. So, they went to take a small fishing net (which actually looks like a butterfly net to me). We went straight to the restaurant and started to order our dinner.

After about more than half an hour the waiter asked me whether i wanted to see the snake that we have found (to tell you frankly, i have forgotten about the snake... this is obviously the syndromme of short term memory). I said nicely to him that i am quite afraid of any reptile bigger than a house lizard. But he insisted that i take a look because it was their biggest catch!

Suddenly my legs became so 'lembik' looking at that 4 m ular sawa! Nak pengsan! My children were so happy to witness the longest and biggest snake right infront of their eyes. It took more than 3 workers to remove it from the plants at the corridor and take a look at the picture.... the snake has not been eating for at least 2 weeks. Dina was so proud telling her relatives in Italy that she was the one who 'found' the 4m snake. Snake to the westerners is such an exotic animal and to find it right infront of you can really make a 'hit story'. It is an experience that she will never forget.

Back to real LIFE

I am safely back in Italy after almost 3 months 'raya keling'. As the term implies... it takes quite sometime to be back to normal schedules. However, i have one song especially for me, i do not remember who is the singer, but it is something like this '.... back to life,back to reality...' It is really the right song to describe my situation right now.

However, there is nothing to complain. We had a good time with families and friends. As this time i also celebrated my 40th birthday, so this summer vacation is really special. On that auspicious day, i went to visit the Wetland Park in Putrajaya. It is not really a big place but going around on the mountain bike until noon was really fun. Then, later we went to Kuala Kuantan to see the fireflies. It is so amazing, looking at thousands and thousands of 'kelip-kelip' !Beautiful! It is more beautiful if we could go later at night when it is really dark. We had to take a small 'sampan' and go through the dark with just the sounds of the water flowing is very exciting, especially for the children. As for me, it is exactly like cerita-cerita zaman dulu (in black and white)... where Normadiah and Aziz Satar happily singing.....It was really a birthday treat for me besides my 4 cupcakes and 4 balloons! I strongly insisted to Vittorio that i wanted to have 40 balloons but ..... 4 balloons were more than enough!

Basil

Basil, i can't have enough of them. Toss them in the salads.... it's divine. Mix with tomatoes and good olive oil and eat them with bruschetta... meraviglioso. I plant them in the pots and put in the garden that receives only afternoon sun.. They need sun but not too much. Too much sun, the leaves will turn yellow and hard.

There are so many kinds of basil; Greek basil, Thai basil, purple basil to name a few.I love them all. They are so easy to grow. I have Thai basil in the greenhouse. Put them for the calamari salad with some fresh cillies and lemon juice. Fantastico!

A couple of weeks ago, i made Thai green curry fish. Never tasted so good. The combination with the lemongrass, galanggal and fresh cillies gave it more distinctive flavor. Basil is also said to deter the mosquito bites. Rub them on your body, you will smell good. Good option rather than an insect repellent!

Redcurrants!

Redcurrants were only associated with me with a drink called 'Ribena'.This is actually a redcurrant flavoured drink that is still widely sold in Malaysia. I can still remember the Ribena advertisement of 2 cute berries with the famous Bollywood song! When i have loads of this berry in my garden this year, i can't even imagine making a drink from them as the fruits have a lot of seeds. Once i read in a gardening magazine that in a small village in south of France, they even make seedless redcurrant jams by removing the seeds with feathers!

The fruits are so tiny, i can't even hold them with my two fingers, let alone using the feathers to remove the seeds! It has been for years that i have been ignoring their existence in my garden, i have even let all the weeds growing around the bushes. I think the temptation was so strong last weekend when i saw the berries were sooo...oooo red and shiny and i couldn't resist myself and pop some of them in my mouth! The taste was so sweet and tangy. I braved myself through the Italian heat to turn them to redcurrant jam with seeds of course!

The redcurrant jam has the gelatine like texture and taste of homemade jams is never the same with the off shelf ones and i will never overlook my tiny berries again!

Doing the kitchen garden has never been a 'fashion' to me. It is done out of necessity because i really want to make sure what we really eat and where do they come from. Or at least the vegetables do not have to travel hundreds of kilometers before reaching our plates. Or at least i really want to feel the real taste of tomatoes, salads and fennels!