GIACOMOTTO

Yesterday we made boeuf bourguignon and we had it today for brunch, I know it’s a little rough but it’s so good we could not resist, everyone who woke up was drawn to the kitchen by the smell!

There is a lot of controversy in France on how the “traditional” one is made, actually it’s a lot about how you like it, some people would argue about the carrots some other would even put potatoes (although I think potatoes is really on the edge of what not to do). Anyway, this recipe is more about some guidelines, maybe general but yet necessary for this dish to be a “boeuf bouguignon” and not just another beef stew.

Ingredients:

- beef, 4lbs (~2kg), rump roast is ok, some other cheap cut is ok too since we are going to cook it almost to death anyway.
- american style bacon (pork belly)
- onions, 2 or 3 big ones (put more if you like onions)
- some butter
- Marc (strong grape moonshine) or brandy
- a bottle of cheap wine, maybe more; so plan a 2nd one just in case
- carrots / mushrooms (both optional but strongly recommended)

Start off by cutting the bacon in little pieces and put them in the your stew pot with a bit of oil to get them started, once they get a bit brown take them out.
remove the pork fat, and do the onions next with some butter until they get a bit softer (not quite fully cooked is best) then take them out.
Cut the meat in 2in/5cm cubes and cook them in the same pot in batches so the meat don’t steam but get brown on all sides (the meat should not be fully cooked on the inside). Add some butter regularly as necessary. put the meat aside.
Once that’s done, put a good amount of marc (~2 shots) and scrape the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. maybe do that for a minute and add the wine and let all that warm up to temperature (almost boiling). Then add back the meat and let everything cook at slow temperature for at least 3h. Note that if there is not enough liquid then just add a bit more wine until the meat is almost all under liquid. May sure to cover the pot during the 3h. Let rest on the stove over night, very important for the meat to relax.
The next day add the carrots / onions / bacon and cook everything together for an extra hour or 2 until carrots are good. By then the meat should fall apart easy. if the meat is already very soft just steam the carrots on the side and cook everything together for 30min.

Now, if you eat that with fresh pasta and some parmesan cheese on top, you are having a very traditional “giacomotto” meal. Although in my family we tend to use bore or deer instead of beef…

We discovered this great card game recently, My friend Nikola grew up playing this game in Serbia and that’s actually how he learned counting…

Here is the game:
The objective is to gather as much cards as possible from the table into your own stack of cards. there can be 2 or 4 players (4 players is 2 against 2 like bridge).

You start the game by giving 6 cards to each player and put 4 uncovered cards on the table. The suits don’t matter in this game.
The cards have the following values:
2 to 10 = 2 to 10 (same)
Ace = 1 or 11 (as you want)
J, Q, K = 12, 13, 14

The first one to play needs to find a sum of the cards on the table that match one of his own cards in his hands, then put those cards in his stack (the one in his hand and the ones that make the sum as well), then the next player goes. If the particular sum occurs several times on the table you can take all the cards that make this sum. For example if the table has 8, 5, 6, 7 and you hold a Q you can take all 4 cards (8+5=6+7=13). If you can’t match anything you have to put one of your cards on the table. After 6 rounds the players don’t have cards and the next 6 cards are distributed to the players from the deck. Repeat until the deck is empty.

At the end, the last one that grabbed something from the table grab the rest of the cards from the table.

Counting points to see who won:

the following cards are worth 1 point: 10, Ace, J, Q, K
there are 2 special cards: 2 of clubs = 1 point and 10 of diamonds = 2 pts
The one that has more cards in his stack gets 3 extra points.
So, the total amount of points in the game is 25.
Also, every time a player clear the table of all cards he gets an extra point.

The first one to reach 101 points has won.

have fun !

Sarah and I went to Ragland, Alabama to go see her grand parents this last week end. I am still amazed of the social contrast between California and over there. It definitively feels like an older country meaning the mentality and the habits of the people over there are much less flexible, a bit like in europe; you know, the real europe not the flashy large cities.

Anyway, we had a great time, Sarah’s grand-ma is definitively the cuttest ever. On sunday night we were all sitting at the kitchen table with Sarah’s mom, Alan and the grand parents. After her grand-pa showed us his WWII souvenirs and things they started telling us about how they both met so we got to hear the whole romantic story - exactly like in “Harry met Sally” - it was so funny.

I’ll post a couple of pictures.

For most people, pastas are the tasteless carbs that goes with the sauce and most of the time this is right because factory made pastas are just that way. And it has to be, I mean for the price we are buying them, the package is likely to be the expensive part for the pasta company. They must be using the cheapest flour mix with the nastiest dry egg extract. This is sad because real pasta made with good bread flour and fresh eggs are just so good with a drop of extra virgin olive oil and a bit of freshly grated parmesan. Now you’ll say making pasta is messy, takes a lot of space, is time consuming, etc… Well with the right tools, right recipe and a little habit it just becomes like a reflex.

Now, you don’t need fancy tools, not even anything electric, but you have to have those three, otherwise forget it, it’ll take you forever to make your pastas:
- A pasta roller-cutter machine: manual, cheap (max 40$), made in italy, works a life time.
- A pasta rack: you can buy one or make one. (I made mine for <10$)
- At least one person to help you

Ingredients:
- 2 cups bread flour
- 3 eggs
- pinch of salt
- tablespoon of olive oil

Mix it all up together, start with a fork and finish with your hands. If there is no more flour in your bowl and the dough is still sticky add some flour (maybe you got big eggs). If you don’t succeed to make one chunk of dough roughly holding together, add a bit of water (maybe you got small eggs). Once you got that dough, take it out and work it on a table, meaning you fold and spread several times to make the dough uniform. Make sure you got some flour available to sprinkle every once in a while if needed. You’re basically done now. You just need to use the machine and the rack. If you got a helper, you can make very long pasta which cuts time in half (one is turning the rollers and the other one hold the dough with 2 hands). And, while you start flattening the dough pieces the other one can spread the pasta on the rack which cuts time in half again. So you go 4x faster with one helper.

When we look at all my paintings, there is a common style thread to them. However, through each of them I try to bring out something very different every time. This process is difficult, but not for the reason you may think of. The monochromic paper drawings are for me something very naturally relaxing and I have a bunch of them ready to be painted. The real difficulty comes in with the colors. I practiced a lot drawing forms that make sense together, I have some in many page corner of my school notes since high school, but colors that makes sense together is something fairly new to me. You probably noticed my first painting genesis is B&W, well this is the reason. Basically, all these paintings I have done so far represent my color coordination learning process. Genesis is for me perfect in term of forms and my objective is to achieve the same level with color. Jupiter is expected to be a major step towards this achievement because it combines the genesis idea with colors. At first I tried to lay down the shapes and then add the colors but I have been stuck on the shapes for months and I realized today they cannot be independent. This is the basic idea explained in the genesis text, it has to be built empirically and the same thing goes for colors. So today, the Jupiter canvas I started is covered with white gesso for a fresh restart. For the same reason, some sections of the freeway from above canvas have been covered as well.

Sometimes it’s better to erase it all so that our imagination is not cluttered with old mess.

I made these great cookies the other day, they are called “Palets de Dames” and that’s my mom’s recipe. On the up side it’s quite easy and fast to make, on the down side they are super addictive and of course super rich. Now that was a bit expected coming from the giacomotto family all time favorite recipes, huh? Assuming you’ll limit yourself to 2 or 3 of these delicacies per day, here is the recipe, if you dare…

Ingredients:
- Butter: 125g (1 cup)
- Sugar: 125g (1 cup)
- Eggs: 2
- Flour: 150g (a bit more than a cup)
- Raisins: 125g (1 cup, more if you want)
- Dark rum

First soak the raisins with rum, the longer they soak, the best it’ll be (I leave them a couple days in a sealed can). Pre-heat the oven to 150C (300F). Then start by whipping up the butter with the sugar until it’s all really creamy. Then add the eggs and the flour all together and let it mix for a while, till uniform. At the end add the raisins and mix gently with a spoon (otherwise you’ll destroy the soaked raisins). Make little stacks on a buttered cookie sheet, the shape is not important since they’ll be all flat when they cook. They cook fast, about 10 minutes maybe, but most important, they are done when they get brown around while staying white in the middle. Have fun!