Eating: A Social Event

Guest Blogger: Chris Manganaro Eating is a social event. Some people believe that food even tastes better when eaten in good company. Eating is an experience best shared in one way or another. If you cannot express your enjoyment to others, the experience of food decreases quite a bit. Sharing a compliment with the chef or telling your companion to have a bite add just the right flavor to any meal. If you made it yourself then seeing others enjoy it is what ends up mattering to you all the more than your own enjoyment. Food helps us to understand one another. In Alice, Let's Eat: Further Adventures of a Happy Eater by Calvin Trillin, we learn about Alice and Calvin as a couple through their experiences with food. Calvin is a food enthusiast, a foodie, a gourmand. Whatever you want to call him, his love of food is more than obvious and sometimes leans towards ridiculous. Alice is also a lover of food, but not exactly in the same vein as Calvin. Throughout the book one can see the differences between the two yet food still brings them together quite often. The book is simply set up in chapters which often revolve around one topic. Each chapter's topic is in some way related to food, of course. Calvin Trillin would not have it any other way. What makes this interesting is that the way each chapter addresses food is not always direct. Each exploit is rather silly and rarely serious. This makes the book move by at a leisurely pace. It is an easy read that is likely to make you chuckle along with your rumbling stomach. Due to Calvin's eccentricities, you may just be laughing at times because his love of food likely outdoes yours. He will eat most anything. For great recipes and food info and tips join 100,000 worldwides subscribers at http://www.marialiberati.com Get your copy of the Gourmand World Award Winning Book The Basoc Art of Italian Cooking: Holidays & Special Occasions-2nd edition at www.marialiberati.com or on Amazon

Wine Soup? Who Knew

Guest Blogger: Renata Toth What characterizes this cold season? Wild animals, mushrooms, orange, grapes and wine are typical to the fall and winter months. The soup I find interesting is a nice warm wine soup in which the flavours of fall and winter are combined with the bitter sweetness of dry white wine. To make this soup for 4, you'll need: • 1 cup dry white wine • 2/3 cup water • 1 egg yolk • 4 egg whites • a few cloves • orange skin • lemon skin • approx 3 tsps sugar • approx 2 tsps of flour First, pour the wine into a pot and start boiling it. Add a few stripes or orange skin and lemon skin and the cloves (5-6 for this amount), and bring it to boil. Meanwhile, beat the egg whites until you obtain a thick and hard cream. Mix the egg yolk with the sugar with a little water, and the rest of the water with the flour. When the wine is boiling, take it off the fire, and add the egg yolk-sugar mix while mixing continuously, and the water-flour mix, while still mixing it continuously in order to avoid the creation of lumps. Bring it to boil once more. When boiling, add the egg whites and mix with a hand whisk until you obtain a smooth and creamy texture. Serve hot in pretty bowls. This soup is fast and delicious, ready in approximately 30 minutes, so it is best to prepare it freshly before the dinner so that it remains hot. Although it keeps its alcoholic and' winey' taste, it practically won't contain any alcohol after boiling, so it is a safe dish for those who plan to drive after dinner. Enjoy! For more great recipes join 100,000 worldwide subscribers at http://www.marialiberati.com Get your copy of the Gourmand World Award Winning book The Basic Art of Italian Cooking: Holidays & Special Occasions-2nd edition

Easy Lemon Jam

Guest Blogger: Renata Toth If you have read my previous post on the chocolate-lemon jam muffin, this one will come in handy, as for the jam itself. Its wonderfully lemony flavour is not only for cakes, though. You can use it as a jam on a slice of buttered bread, on biscuits, on in a pancake as filling. This is a totally home-made receipe as done by my mother and nowadays by myself as well. It does not need a lot of thinking or preparation, and it is a really low-budget treat to prepare. The ingredients for a dose are: • 1 kg white squash (not to be mistaken with the sport), grated • 3 bigger whole lemons, grated (all included) • Powdered sugar You just take the grated squash and cook it on a medium-high fire in its own juice until tender and the sauce evaporates a little. Then, add the grated lemons and cook together. When ready, distribute it into smaller or bigger bottles. You may want to wash the bottles with cold water before you do it, and only add a small amount of the hot jam, otherwise the bottle may crack or even break because of the sudden temperature increase. When the bottles are filled, put a good amount of powdered sugar ont he top to preserve the jam, put the top on tightly, and place them in a basket upside down. Cover them until they cool to avoid a quick cooling that wouldn’t do good to the jam itself. Without opening the bottle, you can keep the jam for years; if the bottle is open, then you need to keep it in the fridge and finish it relatively soon! A great breakfast idea would be to eat some jam with a home-made croissant and either a big mug of coffee or a nice fresh orange juice! Enjoy! For recipes, cooking how to's. join 100,000 worldwide subscribers at The Basic Art of Italian Cooking by Maria Liberati tm BLOG at www.marialiberati.com Or get the new booklet The Basic Art of Christmas Dinner at www.marialiberati.com