Cooking Class Photos

Cooking Class Photos

Yogurt-Marinated Chicken with Red Peppers and Couscous

Flavors of the Sun International Cooking School
San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
with
Victoria Challancin

Once again I have completed an eight-week course of International Cooking designed for Mexican cooks. I selected only a few of the photos from the course--just to honor my students and their considerable efforts.

If any of you tech-savvy bloggers read this and know how to help, I still have no control over font size and would love some input. Nothing looks like it does before I hit the "publish" button. Help!

Grilled Chicken and Persimmon Salad with Bulgur and a Parsley-Pumpkin Seed Pesto

Meatloaf with Moroccan Spices

Guille, mixing a mustard sauce to serve with healthy corn and red pepper fritters

Avocado, Grapefruit, and Papaya Salad with Papaya-Seed Vinaigrette
Mónica, decorating a Fresh Fruit Custard Tart
Mashed Potatoes with Chopped Raw Spinach

Rosa, mixing a Mediterranean Chickpea Salad

Yogurt Fantail Rolls from Gourmet Magazine

Dominga, making vegetarian norimaki sushi

Greek-Style Baked Shrimp with Tomato, Feta Cheese, and Ouzo

The beginnings of Cheese-Topped Portobello mushrooms filled with Quinoa and Vegetables

Pavlova, made with a hint of raspberry vinegar, topped with fresh fruit

Grilled Panela Cheese with Greek Salad and Fresh Herb Vinaigrette

Vegetarian Lasagna with Bechamel Sauce

Cold Mango Gazpach with Fruit Salsa Garnish

Moni, mixing a cold spaghetti dish with Fresh Gazpacho Sauce

California and Philly Sushi Rolls with Pickled Ginger and Wasabi

Baby Lettuces with Papaya and Curry Vinaigrette

A refreshing Cold Melon Soup

Whole-Wheat Egg-White Chive Crepes with Ratatouille and Herbed Yogurt from iVillage.com

Carrot Ribbons and Fresh Peas from Martha Stewart

Recipe: Marinated Moroccan Olives

Moroccan Olives Part V


Marinated Moroccan Olives

by Victoria Challancin

Gifts. Recipes are gifts. Given from the heart, shared with enthusiasm, prepared with hope.

Whenever I travel, I constantly seek out recipes. I ask friends, waiters, fellow diners, and people I meet along the way to help me understand what I am eating and enjoying. Whenever I encounter something I want to duplicate, I sample, I imagine, I sample again, I make notes, I smell, I make more notes, and then, only then, once I understand the flavors, do I try to sort out the process of preparing it. And I ask questions, lots of questions.

The following recipe is a compilation based on those very notes about marinated olives taken on a trip to Morocco last November. I use this as a rough basis, adding and subtracting according to whim and availability of ingredients. Use the best olives you can find--the rest of the recipe is flexible. Enjoy!

Marinated Moroccan Olives
(Recipe by Victoria Challancin, with a little help from her friends)

1 cup green olives
1 cup black olives, preferably imported oil-cured
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, lightly crushed
2 bay leaves
2 to 4 dried red chiles, such as chile de árbol
1/4 cup olive oil
4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
2 tablespoons lemon juice of juice from jar of preserved lemons
3 tablespoons preserved Moroccan lemon, if available, or use fresh
lemon zest
Two sprigs of fresh rosemary or thyme

Rinse olives, pat dry, and put into a mixing bowl.

Place cumin seeds, crushed coriander seeds (smash with a skillet or in a mortar), bay leaves, and dry chiles in a small dry skillet. Toast until fragrant over medium heat for about 45 seconds. Add to olives in bowl.

Add oil to skillet. Heat over medium heat until hot, but not smoking. Add garlic. Sauté for 1 minute to soften. Do not brown. Add rosemary or thyme. Stir for 30 seconds. Add to olives in bowl.

Add lemon juice and preserved lemons (if using) to olives. Mix thoroughly. Store in refrigerator for up to one month. Serve at room temperature.

Note: Use imported olives with pits if possible, not canned. If you don’t have access to preserved lemon, add strips of fresh lemon zest.

Variations:

Moroccan: Add a big dollop of homemade harissa just before serving. Or perhaps warm a few tablespoons of Ras el Hanout in the oil instead of the spices listed in the recipe. Toss with a little chopped cilantro.

French: Anchovies and dried lavender blossoms would make an intriguing mix. Skip the preserved lemon, but add a few orange and lemon slices.

Italian: Add sun-dried tomatoes and rosemary. Use fresh lemon slices instead of preserved lemon.

Spanish: The addition of smoked paprika and toasted almonds would make a perfect tapa. Skip the preserved lemon.

Egyptian: Add a few tablespoons of dukkah and a handful of toasted, peeled hazelnuts.

Interested in visiting Morocco?
Contact me at flavorsofthesun@gmail.com for details of my next small-group tour of Morocco in October of 2009.

Weekend Herb Blogging

I am submitting this post to the Weekend Herb Blogging event, begun by Kalyn of Kalyn's Kitchen and now officiated by Haalo of Cook Almost Anything at Least Once. The hostess this week is Susan, of the wonderful blog, The Well-Seasoned Cook. Check it out for this week's results.

Moroccan Olives: Packaged and Perfect

Moroccan Olives: Part IV

Packaged and Perfect

Photos by Victoria Challancin








Interested in visiting Morocco?
Contact me at flavorsofthesun@gmail.com for details of my next small-group tour of Morocco in October of 2009.

Morocco: The Olive Harvest Part III

Morocco: The Olive Harvest

Part III

The Processed Olives

While the process of pressing oil is fascinating, the olives themselves are the true marvel. In the West, people tend to categorize olives simply either into green and black categories. But in the East, the true secrets of the olive reveal something quite different. Depending on the stage of ripeness, the olives come in a variety of colors, each with a distinct culinary purpose in mind. Each requires its own process of curing. The ripe black olives are generally salted to extract their juices and left to dry in the sun. This dry-cure technique produces a shriveled, wrinkly olive with a chewy texture. The unripe, or green olives, which have the firmest flesh, are the first to be picked. Usually, they are cured in brine and then seasoned with herbs, chiles, and the famous Moroccan preserved lemon. The lavender variety represents the stage between green and black, still ripening but not fully mature. These beauties, popular in cooked dishes, are referred to as simply tagine olives. The slightly darker purple, still in an in-between stage of ripeness, are sometimes pressed with bitter orange. These olives, in their myriad colors, are lovingly displayed throughout the souks of the country.

Olives for breakfast in the Dades Valley

A typical snack of olives and green tea at a favorite outdoor restaurant in Marrakech

A Chicken tagine, which I prepared at La Maison Arabe Cooking School, with preserved lemons and tagine olives

Interested in visiting Morocco?

Contact me at flavorsofthesun@gmail.com for details of my next small-group tour of Morocco in October of 2009.

Morocco: The Olive Harvest Part II

A village olive press, called huilerie in French

Morocco: The Olive Harvest
The Pressing of the Olives

Part II

Another village press

Although large-scale industrial plants for the pressing of olives do exist in Morocco in Fès, Marrakech, and Meknès, the bulk of the pressing is done at small mills, called maasra(s), which dot the smaller towns and villages throughout the olive-growing regions. Some olives are saved for home use, but the bulk of the crop is made into oil, with the surplus sold in souks or by individuals along the road.

An ancient press from Volubilis, the extensive Roman ruins [over 40 hectares] near Meknes that date from the first century A.D.

Olives piled up outside a village press

It takes about five kilos of olives to produce 1 liter of oil.

Plastic receptacles for the newly pressed oil

Sourtines, baskets made of esparto grass--also called sourdins

Stacked sourtines for the second pressing under a simple screw press

At the maasra the olives are placed in a receptacle that houses the grindstone, which is turned by a donkey who walks round and round the press to crush the olives. The pulp is then placed in baskets, called scourtins, made of braided esparto grass. These are stacked and placed under the press where the olives are pressed yet again. The liquid from the olives flows into a trough that leads to a tank where it is left to settle. As it settles, the oil and water from the olives separate and the oil is then stored in earthenware jars—or even plastic jugs.

Nothing left to waste: The dregs of pulp and pits, called pomace, from the pressing, which are often dried and used for fuel in kilns to fire pottery

Next: The Olives Themselves
Part III

Interested in visiting Morocco?
Contact me at flavorsofthesun@gmail.com for information about the next tour scheduled for October 2009.

Morocco: The Olive Harvest Part I

Look at the light on the olives. It sparkles like diamonds. It is pink, it is blue, and the sky that plays across them is enough to drive me mad.
Claude Renoir

Morocco: The Olive Harvest
Part I

An Introduction

The murmur of an olive grove has something very intimate, immensely old. It is too beautiful for me to try to conceive of it or dare to paint on it.
Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo.*

Last November, when I led my third small-group tour to Morocco, I was lucky enough to witness one of the most elemental and ancient food rites, the olive harvest in Morocco. A provocative, enticing, delightful assault to the senses. Trees sparkle like dull silver in the sun, with the fruits peeking through the long, murmuring leaves. Blacks, greens, purples, pinks, and lavenders mingle in a dizzying array of colors, each representing a different stage in the growth cycle of the olive.

Once pressed, the green-gold liquid offers color anew in the form of the surplus oil, which glints tantalizingly in the sun, illuminated in recycled bottles and jars of every shape, perched for sale on tiny roadside tables located near the grove, near the home.



But far more than being a pleasant sensory attack, the olive harvest represents Time. An age-old ritual of community and survival. A coming together of families, neighbors, villages. An interdependence, underscored by necessity, played out with joy. In Morocco I have seen entire families camped near the groves, the men climbing and shaking the trees, the women and children gathering the fallen fruits. From the grove to the local olive press, something every village has, especially in the valleys of the Rif Mountains, the olives travel in trucks, in horse-drawn wagons, in donkey carts, in baskets on mopeds. The olive harvest represents a year’s worth of love and effort by the families involved. The cured fruits and pressed oil provide what is needed to meet the families’ demands in the home. The surplus of both yields extra money. And the memories of the shared labor and coming together of communities truly sustain for a lifetime.

*I found the quotes from Van Gogh and Renoir in Diana Henry's inspiring cookbook, Crazy Water Pickled Lemons, available here.

If you enjoyed these photos, look for the upcoming posts on the pressing of the oil, the olives themselves, and a recipe for Moroccan marinated olives.

Interested in visiting Morocco?
For information on my next small-group tour to Morocco in October 2009, contact me at flavorsofthesun@gmail.com

Recipe: Pear and Prosciutto "Carpaccio" with Balsamic Vinegar Reduction

This refreshing salad is not only beautiful but so easy to prepare!

Pear and Prosciutto "Carpaccio" with Balsamic Vinegar Reduction
(Adapted from a recipe from Everyday Food by Martha Stewart)
Serves 2

1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1 red Bartlett pear, cored, halved, and thinly sliced
2 ounces very thinly sliced prosciutto
Mixed baby lettuces (I added fresh purslane leaves)
Freshly-ground black pepper to taste

In a small saucepan, bring vinegar to a boil; cook, stirring occasionally, until syrupy and reduced to 2 tablespoons, about 5 minutes.

Place the lettuces and purslane on a serving platter or on individual plates. Top with pear slices and prociutto. Drizzle with balsamic syrup as desired, and season with pepper.