Around The World in 80 Dishes

Zuppa de Polpetta

It's no secret how much I love to cook, I am no expert , but the kitchen is my playground.One of the privileges of being an expat is exposure to ingredients and recipes I wouldn't typically encounter in the States. So I'd like to invite you to join in on at least our culinary journey, with "Around The World In 80 Dishes".  Hopefully you'll find a new family favorite! 

The first dish is Zuppa de Polpetta , (or more simply Italian Meatball Soup,) it's perfect for a chilly day . Like most old school Italian food it is straightforward, simple and delicious. You don't have worry about perfection with soup, a rough chop of an onion, and dicing garlic is as complex as it gets with this hearty filling dish. Toast up some garlic bread to soak up the yummy broth! A big tummy rubbing "Thank you!" goes out to my Aunt Jen for introducing me to this dish!                               

 

 

First the Meatballs.... 

1/2 lb of ground chicken

 1/2 lb of ground pork 1 egg  

2 tbsp Parmesan cheese 

1 c day old bread "crumbed" by hand or food processor 

3 cloves of garlic ( left over roasted garlic is ahhhhmazing in this) 

1/2 medium red onion

5 cherry tomatoes or 1 roma tomato

Salt/pepper to taste

Pulse bread in food processor until you reach coarse crumbs, remove to large bowl. Pulse garlic, onion and tomato in food processor or mince by hand. Mix all ingredients gently by hand and form into small meatballs. Fry on stove top until outsides are well browned and firm, You may have to do this in batches(Keep in mind you will use the same pan to finish the soup, so make sure it is deep enough.)

As the last batch of meatballs is frying, I add the rest of the red onion,and a few more cloves of garlic coarsely chopped and a tbsp of olive oil if the pan is dry....

Then the soup...

4 cups of chicken stock

2 cups of cherry tomatoes halved

3 large bunches of fresh spinach cleaned, stems removed

(In the states I use 1 1/2 bags of baby spinach)

2 cups of pre-cooked pasta , I prefer Orecchiette, or Rigati

8-16 oz of Mozzarella cubed ( how cheesy are you?!?)

Add the chicken stock to the pot and return all meatballs to the pan, simmer on medium to high heat for 10 minutes, or until you assured the meat balls are thoroughly cooked. Add in remaining ingredients, remove from heat stir and cover for five minutes. The rest of ingredients will come to temperature with the spinach wilting and the mozzarella turning into gooey goodness!!!

 

.....and for dessert?....

I would like to present to you, lip smackingly good Russian Apple Pie, courtesy of our Russian friends the Tsokolaevas. It's vastly different than American Apple Pie, there is no need to roll out a pastry, but is equally delish!

Yablochnym pirogom

You will need very few ingredients to make this fantastic quick dessert ( or breakfast! in my house)....

4 eggs

1c of sugar

1c of flour

4 large tart apples

A greased and floured cake pan ( I use a spring-form)

Preheat the oven to 400°F or 200°C

First wash, peel/core and dice your apples if they aren't tart enough add  2 tsp lemon juice. Grease and flour your pan, and place apples in the bottom of the pan.

Break all four eggs into a bowl, using a hand mixer beat on highest speed, slowly adding sugar until you have a frothy/creamy mix. (It is not in the original recipe but I always add a dash  of vanilla.)

Turn mixer speed to slow and gently sprinkle in flour while mixing, after all flour is added return mixer to high setting and mix for 5 minutes. Then pour the batter over apples, and level it.

Cook in a preheated oven for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean, cool before removing from pan. 

We eat this still warm, we eat it cold...essentially we EAT this! We love it topped with Lemon Curd, which I'll post a recipe for a little later....let us know if you give either of these a try!

Cooking is like love. It should be entered into with abandon or not at all. ~ Harriet Van Horne

Chun Jie Kuai Le! 春节快乐!

Chinese people know how to PARRRRTTTAAAYYYY!!!!

This lantern is part of a light display, about 8 feet tall at the front gate of our complex.

 Spring Festival is THE holiday in China. Sending a huge migration of people bustling home to celebrate and ring in the Lunar New Year. Families gather to make Jiaozi (or Chinese dumplings), special red banners are hung over door ways, and beautiful red lanterns hang overhead. Lights go up over trees, gates, and bushes. Markets are bursting with people in preparation and lucky (fake) money is burned on street corners to send on to ancestors who have passed.

I watched as our local street cleaner rode around and around the block on his little bike cart, sweeping up the piles of ash left behind. Every twenty minutes or so a new couple would pop up, set out their lucky money, smash some bottle of alcohol and quickly set it all ablaze. It was a fascinating parade of Chinese culture......

All of this tradition dates way back,( how far? I have no idea!). There is folk tale about a beast called Nian, coming to attack the village. All of this red and gold is meant to scare him away, along with fireworks. Lots and lots of fireworks! In our area the show stretched from 5pm to 2am, and started back up at 5 am. This lasted on and off for about a week, some days of Spring Festival days are more significant than others, with hours of fireworks, others were fewer and sporadic. This is what an average morning walk looks, like, red bits of paper littering the street, (this was still smodlering as we passed through).....

 We visited a Lunar Market in the days leading up to Spring Festival. It is the largest outdoor market I have visited here and it was "real" China at it's best. I was so glad the girls and I had the opportunity to see it. Where we live and most of where we tread in Qingdao is pretty "westernized" so for me this was beautiful to behold. There were areas so packed we walked linked hand in hand, creeping through the stalls, at those times I held tight to the girls, so I don't have good pictures, but it was sea of people swarming all around us..I'll let the pictures do the talking from here...

 Chinese Free Parking:)

The girls loved these, but there was no way I was going to carry one around for hours!

GOLD FISH!!! GOLD GOLD FISH! They were amazing!

These guys were super cute!

Name this food! Any guesses?  ;)

This is what a very typical wet market looks like...

Anyone hungry yet? MMMM! Blood Pudding!

Knife a little dull? No problem!

Spices, Peppers and Mushrooms

Peppers, and peanuts with peanut oil ground to order, it smelled delish!

This area was like a bunch a little yard sales, lots of used items.

We came, we saw, but we did not buy t-shirts!

On the 23rd before our party the Rosie, Liv, and I went for a stroll. Well bundled, and ears covered we were greeted by some neighbors who were eager to share the holiday with us and gave the girls some fireworks," for kids!" 

 

A whole box of kid-friendly fire works :)!

We let the biggest kid of us all, (Chris) set them off for us. He bought a few boxes to add to the show.

Our loot!

We let the girls do the sparklers, but the big ones for  we left for Dad!

 The girls were squealing and screaming, it was a riot! I'm sure their first Spring Festival was a very memorable one! :) Happy Dragon Year to you and yours! <3 The Colozza's

Do-overs and apologies

Today I looked at the calender, and wondered where time went. I do this often, maybe too often. I haven't blogged in ages...okay maybe months. When I first decided to blog I thought a weekly blog would be easy, I am learning some things look better in theory. November, December and apparently January ate me alive. Either I was busy, busy, busy, or found life too mundane to bore you with the details. I'll give you a quick review nevertheless.


We celebrated Thanksgiving out at a local hotel holding a western buffet, it was nice but not the home cooked family feel this down-to-earth girl prefers. We all came home and agreed there was "something missing". The girls were enrolled at a British school at the time, and so they didn't even have the day off. I would have pulled them out, but it was also a testing/assessment week. Weird just about sums it up :)

 Mia's birthday came and went in early December...(what do you mean she's 8!?!?!) We had a crazy fun time with the "Mad Scientist" theme she picked. We wore messy crazy hair, goggles, and made t-shirts into lab coats! We experimented, played with green goop,made monsters,  and drank the top secret Potion #8 ( Sprite with yellow and blue ice cubes....what's more fun than a fizzy drink changing colors before your eyes?) The party wrapped up with Rocket Balloon Races. It was awesome!

In November/ December I was going to school almost daily. I had been asked to arrange and direct the Christmas program for Olivia's class. It was a lot of fun. I really got to know the amazing staff at YCIS, not mention the equally awesome students :) In between all of this Olivia hurt her knee, pretty badly and was out of school for over a week. There are no elevators in schools here, and stairs were a big "don't" . She had some traditional Chinese medicine and massage, in addition to physical therapy. Add in a few bouts of flu for each of the girls, and most of November and December are blur otherwise.

Then came December break :) What a relief! or maybe not. YCIS informed it's parents at this time that all secondary students would be moving to the Huangdao Campus. It's a beautiful campus but it's 1h30m away! I just can't ask Olivia to give up 3h of her life sitting on a bus.So three days into break we took the girls on a tour of our second choice of schools. The Chinese program is a little less intensive( the only real reason we chose to go with YCIS). Due to the change in schools the girls were on break from December 16th- January30th! It was like summer vacation in the middle of winter, except much colder and a little boring :) The girls no longer have uniforms, Mia and Olivia promptly invested in neon sneakers. Rosie has snatched up all things pink....and I have lots more laundry to do now! Oh well :) Today is their 2nd day of school and so far so good !

Christmas was different but still very nice, we found an artificial tree and some additional decorations to add to the few we brought. We did all the usual things, watching our favorite movies and baking. We missed you all very much, but were also blessed to be able to celebrate with our Qingdao family. We invited a great bunch of friends over, and it definitely  felt like a holiday! I made dinner, and everyone brought a little something to round it all out.

January first, came without too much fuss. I actually spent New Year's Eve with a dear friend I met at YCIS, Olivia Yang. They took me out for Shanghai Cuisine. I tried duck's tongue, bamboo shoots, lotus roots, and a special chicken dish. I love the veggie dishes here, and as for the ducks tongue? I'll try most everything once....most being the key word. The meat was not bad, a different texture. It was the bones I couldn't get past...yup, I'll never be a bone cruncher, it's just not in me.

During break we visited YCIS for their Spring Festival to say good bye. The girls made jiaozi (dumplings), learned to bamboo dance, dabbled in traditional Chinese arts and enjoyed a "Changing Faces"performance. It was a nice way to end on a positive note and I really appreciated them letting us join in for the fun.

  For all the craziness that is Chinese New Year we celebrated with a Mexican Feast! Our house was filled and I mean filled with people. Many of them are from the girl's new school and it was a nice way to meet the school community without the pressures of being scholarly :) I'll save the rest of  the Spring Festival, and some pics of an awesome lunar market for another post.

So the long and short of it? Time flies whether you are having fun or not! I am sorry I haven't been diligent with my blog. Consider yourself  updated, and know we love you all!

It's a small world after all...

We had a great trip to Hong Kong Disney! The park is small if measured against any US Disney park, but perfect size for two days of unrushed fun. We enjoyed rides, pin trading, parades, and princess makeovers, with our very good friends, The Olsson Family :)

When it comes to details, nobody does it like Disney! We had complementary Mickey Mouse slippers, Sneezy Kleenex dispensers, chandeliers with glass slippers, and character shaped pancakes, waffles and butter pats. So much to take in, that you would notice a new detail with each pass through a corridor.

The park is located on Lantau Island, so even though we were surrounded by the all the fun that is Disney, we sat nestled amongst beautiful mountians, that could be seen from all angles of the park, edged by the sea.

Each morning we had a big breakfast with the characters,

Minnie, Mickey, Goofy and Pluto made their way to out to greet us.

Our Hotel also had a gorgeous pool complete with water slide!

We wrapped up our last day at the park with princess makeovers!

Then it was time to hit the park!

.... rub elbows with Royalty!

...and try to pull the sword from the stone....

It was amazing, and just what we needed :) As always we send our love to all beloved people far and wide!