European Eats: Vieille Ville Market

After three weeks of traveling around Europe, I am finally back at home.

Of course, when I got home, I had a long list of things I had to plow through: sister's high school graduation, start my new internship at Missouri Life magazine and move into my new apartment. Now that everything is finished and my kitchen is unpacked, I've started thinking of all of the summer cooking and baking projects I'm going to try and accomplish.

I was immensely inspired by my travels through Italy, Greece, Turkey and France. While sitting down to dinner for two hours every night got a little old near day 19, it was a refreshing break from my every day life. Food is an event there. It is not treated as a ten-minute break for a brief energy source. It is treated as a social gathering -- a chance to sit down, reconnect with your family and friends and most importantly, become connected to what nature has to offer us for the replenishment and renewal our bodies (all the while slowly moving your belt buckle back a couple of notches).

For the next couple of weeks, I will focus on what inspired me most while I was there, and then later this summer I will try to incorporate those things into my daily life. One thing that I've already tried to make a part of my life is the farmers market. While Columbia has an impressive market (seriously, they have Goatsbeard Farm there. Nuff said.), we stumbled upon an absolutely beautiful market in Cannes.

We were walking through the Vieille Ville (Old City) before making our way to the Cannes Film Festival, and we just happened to turn the corner of a small street and see this market. The food was vibrant and looked like actual works of art. I could have stayed there all day. Unfortunately, I couldn't, so instead I took a lot of pictures to remind me what food could actually be.

"Catching Fire" Update

So, I'm probably a third of the way through Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. It's a very insightful and well-written book. Some things I noticed or that stuck out to me:

1. The expensive tissue theory is really cool. Basically, Wrangham is saying that because of cooked food, which contains way more energy than raw food, our digestive systems were able to decrease in size, taking less energy. This then left energy for our brains, which then grew in size, leading to higher levels of intelligence and larger brains. I didn't know this, but apparently our brains consume 20% of all the food we eat--significantly more than any other animal. This probably explains why we have created amazing things like cars, planes and twinkies.
   
2. Wrangham uses a lot of studies, which is helpful. It also makes the book more of a "smart read" instead of a relaxing read. Probably my favorite study that he cites is one on raw food diets. He pretty much says that raw food diets are BS and there is no way humans could ever survive on such a diet. I want to say that more than 50% of the woman in the study completely stopped having their periods (you should read the book instead of quoting me on that).
   
3. Also, he mentions something about instinctual raw foodists. I know--just when you thought raw foodists were already crazy, here come even crazier ones. Basically, they "let" their stomachs decide what they will eat. They will smell all of the fruit in a bowl, for instance, and then instinctually pick what to eat.
   

Those are just a few thoughts. I still have a while to go before I finish the book. I'm actually pretty excited, though, because he's getting ready to talk about the gender roles that evolved from cooking. We'll see what amazing and brilliant things he has to say!

Note: I may or may not have a slight crush on this man.

Other note: I just read my post on the Farmer's Market. Boy was it sappy and generic. I guess that's what happens when you've been surrounded by fresh, amazing produce and food for an hour!

And just one final note: We went to CJ's last night. They have the absolute best chicken wings in all of this grand nation. I ate way too many and felt the grease monster to its full effect this morning. Totally worth it.

Goats Hopping on the Roof

A month or two ago, I was reading the Food and Wine section of The New York Times. I tend to do that a lot when I am bored, in case you haven't noticed. There was a pretty interesting article on goat meat that convinced me I had to try it. The article touted numerous benefits--more protein than beef and less fat than lamb. And wouldn't it be stupid not to try the source of meat that most of the world actually eats on a regular basis? Of course it would.

But when I was little, my mom used to tell me about a pet goat she had growing up. Apparently this goat climbed the barn's roof and ignited quite some anger within my grandpa. Curses were cast. Expletives were muttered under his frustrated breath. And this quirky, lovable portrait of goats was all I really had to go off of when I thought of goats.

At the farmer's market a week or so ago, though, one of the farmers was selling goat meat. Because I'd made Jim read the article, he too was swayed to give it a try. So we went for it and bought four goat chops for $10, which was a little bit pricey given the size of the chops (which were a lot tinier than I'd expected). Adventure in cooking, however, has no price.

And finally, on Sunday, we cooked them. Jim's brother gave us a recipe for Goat Curry that would take about 4 hours, which is exactly what's needed to make the meat as tender as possible. Our apartment smelled delicious for the better part of the day. Nothing like smelling something all day to make you crave it.

Or so I thought. The entire time Jim was making the curry, I kept thinking about a cute and friendly goat hopping all over a roof. I knew that the curry would be amazing, but I was nervous to try it. When Jim pulled a chop out of the curry to check its tenderness, he pulled a little piece off for me to try. I went to take the piece, then changed my mind and squealed. "A goat??? I'm going to eat goat?" I thought. But it looked and smelled great, so I ate it. And it was great. It tasted just like spicy pot roast, honestly.

The added effect of imagining a goat climbing up a barn only made it taste better!

Goat Curry

4 goat chops
3 large yellow onions
2-3 tablespoons oriental curry
1 tablespoon chili powder
2-3 potatoes
2 carrots
2 tablespoons Canola oil

Chop up onions very finely. If you have a food processor, put them in there to make a paste. Heat the oil in a stock pot. When oil is hot, put onions in pot. Cook until they are golden brown and smell slightly nutty. Add the curry and chili powder to the onions and stir.

Salt and pepper the goat chops. In a separate skillet, sear the goat chops until brown crust develops. Put seared chops in with the onions. Add water until the chops are covered. Cover the stock pot and let simmer for three hours, stirring occasionally.

After three hours, cut up potatoes and carrots and put in the pot. While vegetables cook, make rice and serve curry over the rice. When vegetables are cooked, you can take the chops out to pull the meat off of the bone and put back in the pot.

Note: When eating the curry, watch out for bones. Because goat meat isn't very popular, they don't butcher it very well. We found a couple bones in the curry even after we took the meat off the bones. If you'd rather, and what I'll do next time, is to take the meat off of the bones before I sear the meat.

Columbia's Farmer Market

The start of the Columbia's Farmer's Market is a perfect reason for me to start writing again.

What I love about the Farmer's Market is how community-oriented it is. The grocery store is an errand. You want to get in there, get what you need (and you know exactly what that is and where it is), and get out. At the Farmer's Market, it's a conversation. You ask the woman selling cute jade plants how to care for it, and she tells you. She tells you that it is the hardest plant to kill. It doesn't even matter if that isn't true. What matters is that you are actually conversing with the person who is providing what you want to buy.

And, when you're done talking to her, you talk to the guy selling homemade pasta, which starts a conversation about how people cook pasta wrong more times than not. Too little water. Not enough salt. Way too overcooked. It's refreshing.

And the breezy air and sunshine can't even begin to compete with supermarket lighting and stuffy air.

Needless to say, I'm more than excited that the Farmer's Market is open for the season. I plan on visiting more than I should, considering there is a stand with homemade mini pies that are delicious.