Scotch Bonnets - Part 2

As you know, my first go-round with these hot tamales was tame. Disappointing, even. And there's nothing like all bark with no bite to get a girl overly confident for the next time cooking with lethal-grade peppers.

I decided pasta with spicy buttery shrimp and tomatoes might be a nice combination.

Instead of using the peppers in the final dish, I wanted to infuse the butter with heat and then remove the peppers from the skillet before adding the shrimp and tomatoes. I used two again, as in the first time, in case those mild puppies had been a fluke.

I was right. One minute into sauteeing the peppers in foaming butter, J cleared out of the kitchen, coughing. Two minutes in, and I was throwing open the windows, turning on the extractor fan, swinging the kitchen door back and forth to suck fresh air in, and clamping a lid on the pan.

Thankfully, this is one of the quickest meals you can make, which happily reduces the period of time that your eyes sear. I turned down the heat, sauteed the shrimp until pink, the cherry tomatoes until soft, and then spooned over linguine with snippings of fresh parsley. Ultimately the heat was just the right amount. I think I love these peppers. But I will never underestimate their ability to clear out a kitchen again.

Semi-Poached White Fish

Summer is really here (trust me, it took it's tiiiiime in Boston)! Time for light, refreshing dinners.

I visited Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food for inspiration. I haven't made much from this volume because it's more about championing her philosophy of buying local, taking the time to cook and be together, and to savor the food, than it is a list of detailed recipes (although it is full of recipes).

But I needed some easy ideas, and out it came.

This is the easiest light summer dish. So little effort with quite a lot of elegance. Ms. Waters calls it shallow poaching, where instead of covering the fish fillets with water, one brings the water and wine or white wine vinegar halfway up the side of the fish and simmers it slowly. Then flip it and poach the other side until the fish is opaque and flakey.

Reduce the wine / water / butter / lemon / parsley concoction and pour over the fish and bed of freshly steamed local fresh vegetables. Bon appetit.

Still Life Breakfast with Farm Fresh Egg

On-the-Fly Elbows

I have been a busy girl recently, hence the posts on what to make when all you have time for is boiling water. Boiling water is miraculously useful, and when I worry that by the time I'm an old lady, the world will have fallen around me and we'll be living in caves again, I think, "Well, at least I can still boil water in my retirement cave."

Whether I will have pounds of pasta at the ready is another story, but I don't want to go there.

I keep a 2 lb stash of elbow macaroni at the ready for times like these. I like them specifically for hurried meals because two handfuls of elbows go an awfully long way, and they cook in under four minutes.

For this meal-in-under-ten-minutes (Rachael Ray, I got you beat!!), boil the water, cook the pasta, reserve half a cup of the hot water, and tumble the pasta, chopped soft cheese, fresh parsley, salt and pepper with the elbows and the pasta water. Fresh and light.

Pisco Sour

If there is one drink people tell you you have to try while in Peru, it's the Pisco sour. The thing is, it's one of those fancy fluffy drinks that looks like it may only be served to tourists and cannot be found in local holes in the wall which offer three-course lunch deals for the equivalent of $1.

As such, I would normally hesitate to order a frothy drink that was designed just for me because I am a visitor to the country.

Well, thank goodness I got over that quickly. A quick scan of ingredients told me I'd be a fool to pass it up.

Pisco. Okay. Come back to that one.
Freshly-squeezed lemon juice.
Sugar.
Egg whites.

Sign me up! I'm not being facetious. As a fastidious whipper of egg whites over the holiday season to create the frothy head of egg nog, I am familiar with the airy power egg white can add to a drink.

Aha. Thanks again Google. Pisco is a grape-based spirit, thankfully nothing like grappa!

If I can find Pisco, I will soon be making this at home. Perhaps it will supplant my favorite cocktail of all time, the Caipirinha. It is that good.

Mate de Coca

J and I recently returned from ten days in Peru, from a base altitude of 7,000 feet above sea level in Arequipa to the dizzying heights of Lake Titicaca, around 13,000 feet above sea level. We didn't realize that our first stop would already be almost two miles high, and as such, discovered we needed to treat or prevent any feelings of altitude sickness immediately.

Mild symptoms of soroche, or altitude sickness, are locally treated or prevented by the pre-Columbian homeopathic remedy of coca leaves.

If I hadn't read this article in the Times earlier this year, I would have approached the ubiquity of the coca leaf in Peru with trepidation and wouldn't have dreamed of using it to adapt to the climate.

I arrived in Peru armed with Diamox, a prescription drug that aids absorption of oxygen in the thin air of high places, but this needs to be taken a few days in advance for maximum effectiveness. Um. No irony, of course, in being happy to take prescription drugs but initially wary of the plant that puts the "coca" in cocaine.

With the Times article fresh in my mind, though, we also combated altitude sickness with coca the minute we got there.

Hotels serve it brewing in samovars in the lobby, and provide both coca tea bags and loose leaves at the breakfast buffet. Coca is also available in food - cookies, toffees, caramels.

Between the coca and the diamox, we both felt as fit as a fiddle. We'll never know, of course, which one, if either, had any effect on us. But, you know, I get to feel like a little bit of a badass saying I've had coca tea. Even if it's about as edgy as this picture:

The Land of the Camelids

J and I are off on our summer vacation! We are going to the land of the camelids. See you in a couple of weeks! Enjoy these behooved friends, culled from my google image search: