Bright and warm winter vegetable puree

As the cold temperatures of December set in, I felt eager to share a childhood recipe that’s warmed up many a lunch and dinner throughout the years. During the winter months, a variety of vegetable purees were often served as the first course for lunch at home, and were always very welcome and appreciated. But I had my favorites, and the one I was set to showcasing here was undoubtedly king of my heart. It’d been a while since I’d last had it, too, increasing my urge to make it. A couple of National holidays combined with accomodating professors meant I was class-free for the week, which I took advantage of to visit my parents; this was perfect timing to make the recipe with my mom, who’s always glad to lend a hand for my blogging endeavours.

I got out my props, made everything pretty, chopped away and shot and stirred. After a morning full of cooking and styling, we finally sat down to lunch (at 4 p.m. This is Spain, folks) and I earnestly raised the first spoonful of bright orange belly warming concoction to my mouth with a smile of jovial anticipation. The moment it passed through my lips I knew something was off, and joy turned dissapointment as it went down my throat.

I inmediately knew what was amiss: we added about half a zucchini that didn’t belong there. This really brought me down. The puree tasted fine, and it had a nice texture and was perfectly alright, but it was not what was in my mind; not what I wanted to share. I know that, in the big scheme of things, this was a rather meaningless glitch, but it felt like a really stupid mistake that would send all the work down the drain (and I’m a real newbie in this field, so it takes me forever to make up my mind about how to style stuff in order to make it look blog worthy and decide on what props to use and then take acceptable pictures of it and so on and so forth).

So my first reaction was obviously to throw everything away and start from scratch. But then I decided it would really be a shame to not use what I already had just because there was a quiet inoffensive zucchini taking up some room in the pictures. I guess a lot of the time we tend to be too hard on ourselves so I decided to cut myself some slack; we just made another batch of puree, this time without the zucchini, to make sure that it turned out the way it should (it did), and I’m just using the pictures I had of the first batch, although of course giving you the actual directions to the original unaltered version (sans zucchini), hoping that it might help warm you up some chilly December night or brighten up your day with its festive luminous shade and pure pleasing taste.

Winter vegetable puree:

• 3 carrots
• 2 medium/smallish potatoes
• one big yellow onion
• half green bell pepper
• 400g (14 oz can) of crushed tomatoes
• 1 l (about 4 cups) water
• olive oil
• 1/2 ts sugar
• salt, garlic and parsley (you can make it as the link suggests or just mince garlic and parsley separately)

Pour some olive oil into a big, tall pot (enough to lightly cover the bottom, maybe 2 Tb or so) and set it over high heat.

While the oil is heating up, slice the onion (it doesn’t need to be too thin).

When the oil is hot, but not yet smoking, dump the sliced onion into the pot and stir around to distribute oil evenly.

Slice the green bell pepper and add it to the pot; stir some more. If it begins to smoke a lot and/or the vegetables start to brown, lower the heat, as we don’t want this to happen.

Peel and slice the carrots, add them to the pot and keep stirring for a bit.

Peel and dice the potatoes (not too small, maybe roughly 1.5 cm (1/2 to 3/4 inch) cubes).

Keep stirring the other vegetables and, when the onion and pepper feel rather soft, add the potatoes and season with the salt, garlic and parsley to your liking (I guess I added about 1 loosely packed Tb).

Keep cooking, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes or so. Then add the crushed tomatoes and a big pinch of sugar (about 1/2 ts), stir to combine, and add the water, which I measure with the can of crushed tomatoes so I get all of the tomato into the pot. If you want to do it this way, use 2 and 1/2 cans of water. If not, just add about 4 cups.

Bring to a boil, turn the heat to low and let cook until the potatoes are very, very tender, falling apart if you pierce them, maybe 1 hour and a half or more.

Use an inmersion blender to turn into a puree (or whatever kind of blender you have. I like inmersion blenders because they are inexpensive, take up very little space and do the job for an incredible variety of uses).

Serve and dive right in. It’s also very good with some grated cheese sprinkled on top.

Since there’s only vegetables in it (no cream or other more quickly perishable ingredients) it will keep for several days in the fridge. It also freezes nicely, in case you want to save up some for later use.

Movie love and hot chocolate

Didn’t you just love to go on fieldtrips as a kid? Fieldtrips are, without the slightest doubt, some of my fondest, most treasured memories from my school years, from kindergarden all the way through until I sadly had to say goodbay to them in college. Back in high school, we used to get two daytrips to the International film festival in Gijón, one with our English teacher, to watch a movie in English, another with the French one, to watch a movie in French. I always looked forward to those movie trips, and that might be why every year I get so excited about the festival. I’m currently living in Gijón, so of course the gent and I got tickets for a few features, which I find is usually a hit-or-miss situation, since most movies look good on paper and you don’t know what you’re actually gonna find, but I’m glad to say we made mostly good choices.

I ended up attending 8 movies in a pretty varied and eclectic selection, including films such as Youth in revolt, a juvenile comedy taken up above others of the kind by Michael Cera’s characterization of the nerdy hopelessly in love guy, the appearance of Steve Buscemi in a smaller role and overall fine performances by the whole cast;  Un amour the jeneusse, which combined greater-than-life adolescent infatuation Splendor in the grass-style with some Paris and architecture, and I found rather moving, or Megacities, documenting several gut-wrenching stories of survival in some of the Earth’s hugest metropolis.

Last Saturday was the last day of the festival, and since we were going downtown for a couple of movies that evening, we decided it was a great time for hot chocolate. We went to a pastry shop named Balbona; they make all kinds of sweet creations and have a catering business too, we entered the shop to several tempting vitrines showcasing line upon line of delicious looking confections, chocolates and petits fours. We picked our battles quickly, as we didn’t have too much time before heading to the theater (which was really close) if we wanted to get good seats.

Sacher torte and chocolate mousse ball covered in chocolate ganache for him.

Chocolate-hazelnut cake and a chocolate mousse ball covered in white chocolate ganache for me.

And hot chocolate for the two of us.

Demolished.

It was really good hot chocolate indeed. As we say in Spain, let things be clear and chocolate thick. This one was not only thick, but you could also tell it was made with fine chocolate, for its taste was truly exquisite.

The other stuff was really good too; supple ganaches, soft, creamy mousses punctured by crunchy and cakelike bases for some texture and support, and deep flavored chocolate cake layers. There isn’t much more one could ask for. Except maybe a good movie afterwards, so we levitated our way out of there and into the theater, where we watched “No et moi“, a film about a 13 year old really bright, kind of lonely girl who, after doing a school paper on homelessness, ends up giving shelter to a young girl she meets while doing some research. I liked the movie overall, although I couldn’t stand the homeless girl character and found her extremely nerve-racking.

We had a short break, of which we took advantage to eat a chocolate palmier.

(that picture is just for reference, as those aren’t the ones we ate that day. There’s quite a bit of chocolate palmier love in our lives).

And back into the theater we went, to top off the night with the one movie I liked best of all the ones I saw (which was pretty lucky, if you ask me); “Miss Bala“. Loved the story, the photography, the atmosphere… only complaint was I couldn’t make out half of what was spoken and would have really needed some subtitles. I seriously had a much harder time understanding the dialogues than I did with the previous one (which was obviously in French). But anyway, Miss Bala seems to have been featured at several big time festivals this year, and I would recommend it wholeheartedly.

And then, after a long round of applause, the curtain was drawn for the night, and until next year’s edition which would make for the festival’s respectable 50th birthday.

So I’d say this was a pretty sweet Saturday night. Hope to be back soon with a recipe…

Are you a film festival lover/goer? Any amazing findings you’d like to share? And, more importantly, do you believe in hot chocolate and pastries as the perfect pre movie warm up? I most certainly do!