nonsense!

Roasting a chicken has been in my to-cook list for a while now. I always thought of it as something really hard or annoying, and I kept pushing it aside. Last week, however, I ran into into this super simple roasted chicken recipe the other day, and decide that it was about time to give it a try (Thomas Keller’s choice of it as his last meal gave it an extra bonus).

Roasting the chicken turned out to be simpler than I thought. It took me about an hour and a half from prepping to table, with a very crispy and tasty bird at the end. The only hard thing was cutting the chicken into good-looking portions. If you haven’t done it before, I really recommend going through this guide while the bird cooks.

A tip: If possible, use sea-salt instead of kosher salt. The saltiness goes really well but the crispy meat and the thyme.

Give it a go, you’ll be surprised how easy and good it is!

After two years trying, I finally made it to the fair this year!

Pics: A cool cow / The fair / The best scones in the whole universe / Big carved pumpkins

One of my favorite coffee preparations (and I drink a lot of coffee), is Mexico City’s  “Café con Leche”. Popularized by the now almost defunct “Chinese coffee houses” of Avenida Obregón,  (where, until very recently all of their employees were Chinese who barely spoke Spanish), it’s the perfect drink for a cold Sunday morning, especially if you have some sweet pastries to go with it, such as  biscuits (as it’s traditionally served), or a scone.

Ingredients (makes for two tall glasses)

·         A cup of very strong coffee (a moka pot or an espresso machine works great for this)

·         A cup of hot milk

·         Sugar to taste

·         Two biscuits*

·         Jam*

How to

·         Pour half of the coffee on each milk glass  

·         Top each glass with the hot milk 

·         Add sugar to taste    

·         Warm up the biscuits, slice them in half, and spread the jam in them*

*The jam and biscuits are optional. But be warned, you’ll be missing half the experience.

Hope you like it!

PS: The second paragraph of this article talks a bit about the Chinese coffee houses (“Cafés de Chinos”, in Spanish) in case you’re curious about them.

Weekends like these makes all those rainy days worthwhile.  Photos taken in Alki beach in West Seattle.

- Ramiro

Made this for dinner tonight, came out pretty good:

Ingredients (makes for two full portions)

·         1 15oz can of cooked garbanzo beans

·         1 cup diced tomatos

·         1 cup diced green pepper

·         ½ cup diced red onion

·         2 tbsp minced garlic

·         2 tbsp lemon juice

·         2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

·         2 tbsp white wine vinegar

·         Salt and pepper to taste

·         Crumbled feta cheese to taste

How to

1.       Mix everything but the feta cheese together, and let it rest for at least one hour

2.       Chill in the fridge, covered, for another hour.

3.       Mix in the crumbled feta cheese right before serving.

4.       Enjoy!

Great dish for a hot afternoon, went great with a cup (or two) of chilled rosé wine.

Hope you like it!

- Ramiro

In the list of weird things in Seattle, this easily fits in the top 10.

Right in the middle of ‘downtown’ Freemont there’s a  16 feet bronze sculpture of Lenin, the father of the Russian revolution. Imagine that, a huge bronze statue of the major communist figure in history, right in  the middle of an American city! I have no  idea how that was even allowed, but I love it! It just makes Seattle even cooler.

There’s a whole Wikipedia entry dedicated to the statue, take a couple of minutes and check it out, it’s pretty cool. If you live in the Seattle area, and have never seen it, you should really drive (or cycle, Freemont is really bike-friendly) and say hi to comrade Lenin. It’s right on the intersection of Evanston Ave N, N 36th St, and Fremont Place.

- Ramiro