Do you know what’s great about taking something fancy that tastes really good and trashing it up a little?  It still tastes really good, but maybe even better because the trashy part adds a whole new dimension of delicious.  Classy and trashy are the perfect combination, just like Lady and the Tramp (except he was so much cuter than her).

Look at this duo.  Does it look like a power team, ready to take over the world?  The fiery kick of the Thai chili sauce backed up by the brawny French brie–they’re unstoppable.

Bookended by slices of sourdough bread, these unlikely allies join forces with arugula to become a killer sandwich.  The brie tames the heat of the sriracha, and the arugula adds a much-needed green break from the sheer creaminess of the cheese.  Serve the brieracha to someone you love and they’ll love you more.  Serve it to someone you hate and… wait… why would you waste this on that jerk?  Eat another one yourself.

Brieracha Sandwich

Cut some brie into thinnish slices (it is ok to leave the rind on) and arrange them on the bottom slice of your sourdough sandwich bread.  Mound a handful of arugula over the cheese, and season with salt and pepper if you wish.  Spread a thin (or thick, depending on your taste) layer of sriracha on the top slice of your bread, then close your sandwich.

I used our Griddler to toast the sandwiches, but you could toast them in a pan on the stove with a heavy pan on top to weigh them down.

Portland is unseasonably scorching hot right now.  I know this because I’ve let my dog outside to soak up sun, then let her back inside to cool off her baked little brains.  Repeatedly.  Here at the Powell Parich house, we’re staying cool inside.  We opened our windows overnight, shut them this morning, and that, teamed up with our fairly new insulation and brand new siding, seems to be doing the trick.  Still, I used the weather as an excuse to try this spinach lemon sorbet.

Spinach, lemon juice, and lemon zest.  These ingredients practically burst with possibility.  Just think–you could make pasta with lemon and spinach, swap out the pasta for couscous (even better in hot weather because you could heat the water in your electric tea kettle), a lemon spinach quiche or frittata, a wilted salad, or this could be the beginnings of soup.

Not this time, though.  This time I made a vibrant summery sorbet with these bright yellow and green building blocks.  This sorbet’s shocking hue are the first hint that it isn’t your garden variety frozen fruit treat, but don’t worry–it isn’t like eating a frozen bowl of salad.  The spinach flavor takes a back seat (a nutritious, vitamin-filled back seat) to the punch of lemon, but it does provide a more interesting, complex flavor than a plain lemon sorbet.

We tried a similar sorbet in Bulgaria, though it actually tasted more of spinach.  Next time I make this, I’m going to up the spinach factor.  Feel free to play around with the amount of greens in this recipe–even if you can’t taste the spinach very much, eating a serving of greens while enjoying your dessert can’t be a bad thing.

Spinach Lemon Sorbet

Yield:  about 8 smallish servings

Ingredients:

1-2/3 cups water

1-2/3 cups sugar

2 teaspoons lemon zest

1 cup freshly-squeezed lemon juice

8 oz spinach, cleaned (remove stems only if your spinach is really adult–young stems are tender enough to include)

Instructions:

In a small/medium saucepan, bring the water and sugar to a boil.  Let the mixture boil for a couple of minutes until the sugar is completely melted into the water.  Remove the pan from the heat and let it cool completely.  If, like me, you are impatient, transfer the mixture to a heatproof bowl and set it inside a larger heatproof bowl filled with ice cubes.  This’ll speed things up considerably.

While the simple syrup (the sugar mixture) is cooling, blend the lemon zest, lemon juice, and spinach until very smooth.  I detest my blender, so I used my food processor.  There will be little green bits.  If you aren’t ok with that, pour the mixture through a fine sieve.

Stir the simple syrup and lemon/spinach mixture together, then churn it in your ice cream machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Check out Tae’s Low-Commitment Project for the week.  Drift Away is a tiny visual vacation–so dreamy.

I called my mom to vent about frustrations yesterday.  She let me blather for 15 minutes straight about issues totally unrelated to her, just because she’s my mom and she’s there for me.  In the mom lottery, I hit the jackpot.  When I was under 4′ tall (and that was a very long stretch of time–late bloomer), she spent hours chatting with me while sewing and looking out the window at the birds.  She pep-talked me every morning through my daily sobs and requests to be home schooled as the big yellow bus approached.  From my first riding lessons at eight through my license-getting at 16, she drove me and my grimy, horse-loving compatriots, to the barn multiple times a week, waited out our chores and riding lessons, and returned us home.

In an effort to reciprocate just a little of her patience and care, I’ve compiled a short list of things I’ll try to keep in mind:

• Do not ask mom complicated questions before nine in the morning.  You can say good morning and get a hug.  Stop at that point.
• If you need to borrow dishes, serving utensils, any color of cloth napkins, or liqueur glasses, mom’s your lady.  She knows how to set a table.
• Mom loves bread.  Mom detests soggy bread (this means you, panzanella and bread pudding).
• Mom doesn’t drink beer or wine.  If you don’t have a good scotch on hand, you’d better plan an alternative beverage.

These dried, shriveled blossoms are beautiful to begin with, but they get more vibrant and striking after you make syrup with them.

After you create this syrup, there are infinite uses.  I put about three flowers and a little syrup in a glass, then filled it with sparkling water for my mom.  You could do that and add vodka, as well.  These are also wonderful dropped in a glass of sparkling wine or champagne.  I think they’d be lovely on top of a fairly plain cake.  Or with ice cream.  Oh, and do try eating the flowers straight out of the syrup–they’re delicious.  Tart, sweet, fruity, and floral.

Hibiscus Flower Syrup

Ingredients:

1-1/2 cups water

1-1/2 cups sugar

1 cup whole dried hibiscus flowers (my mother-in-law brought me some from the middle east, but you can find them online at places like this)

Instructions:

Bring the water and sugar to a boil in a small/medium saucepan and stir until the sugar is melted.  Add the hibiscus flowers and bring back to a boil.  Reduce the heat to a simmer and let the syrup reduce for about a half hour, or until it reaches the consistency you want.

Store any unused flowers and syrup in the refrigerator.

At our family’s house in Bologna, Lella prepared a big spread for lunch.  We happily munched on a plate of Prosciutto di Parma.

The caprese salad included artichoke hearts.

We loved this simple tuna and white bean salad.

In case we needed more delicious meats, there was a platter of bresaola with Parmigiano Reggiano.

Bright, beautiful bruschetta.

For dinner (yes, the same day as that incredible lunch), Lella and Piero served a holiday-like feast.  Their daughter Sabrina and her family joined us, which was great fun.  Above are the baked pasta shells served first.

I’m not the biggest fan of pork, but even I liked this.

My cousin (it’s more complicated than that) Martina, eating her favorite–mozzarella wrapped in bread, then fried.  There’s no way that could be anything but good.

Sabrina made a tiramisu.  She was disappointed that the top wasn’t perfect, but I couldn’t understand whether it was all supposed to look like the swirly end or the solid end.  That didn’t matter because it was delicious.  Michael and I ate some for breakfast, too.

The following day’s lunch began with pasta pomodoro.

This plate of deliciousness is prosciutto-wrapped burrata.  I swear we ate mostly vegetables at this meal, but I somehow didn’t photograph them.

For dinner, we met with the rest of our relatives at a restaurant in the countryside.  I tried tortellini en brodo–a specialty of the region that Lynne Rosetto Casper recommended I seek out.

My main dish was beef with arugula and tomatoes.  It was great, but waaaay too much food.

Michael actually finished his beef with onions.

I don’t know what these were called, but we loved them.  They’re pillowy, fresh, hot breads.  We ate them with fresh cheese or prosciutto.

Here’s my family.  Great, right?  From left, there’s:  Piero, Debora (Alberto’s girlfriend), Alberto, Alessia, Gigi, Paola, Sabrina, Michael, and Lella.

I managed to plan every single flight, bus ride, and train trip on our vacation in just such a way that we’d have to wake up at 3 in the morning.  Maybe I didn’t want to waste one moment of waking hours on travel, but I didn’t factor in the exhausted, falling-into-bed naps we’d require after these moves.  After our taxi to shuttle to airport flight from Paris to Bergamo to shuttle to train to Parma to long walk to B & B, we did indeed nap.  When we woke, Michael and I wandered around town and found ourselves a little sweet shop and cafe where we could stop for an aperitivo.

I love that.  I could do that every day.  Coffee shops in the morning I could take or leave, but a cafe with reasonably priced aperitifs and free munchy snacks in the evening would be irresistible.  This time, I drank a Prosecco while Michael ordered that bright red Campari concoction.

The host at our Parma B & B*, Enza, recommended Gallo d’Oro for dinner.  When the hostess led us to our table, we passed three fancy meat slicers.  I think that’s a good sign.  We ordered a plate of prosciutto di Parma (well, come on, that’s the whole reason we visited the town), and it was breathtakingly good.  It is so luscious–moist, tender, flavorful–compared to the second-rate stuff I settle for at home.

This was my salad of greens, fennel, walnuts, and fresh sheep cheese.  It’ll probably make an appearance on our table this year.

Michael ordered this ham-filled ravioli.  We were both really pleased with our selections.

Enza also suggested we visit Grom for our gelato that evening.  Michael’s coconut and my pink grapefruit actually worked well together.

After our time in Parma (another post on that later), we hightailed it to Bologna to visit our relatives.  Lella and Piero hosted us, and our first lunch (prepared by Lella) there was off-the-charts good.  I’m not sure how I didn’t photograph the whole thing, but I blame it on the cold I was battling.  We started with the pasta and ragù sauce above.  After that, Lella served a platter of bresaola, Parmigiano Reggiano, and arugula as well as a baked endive dish (which I must try to make at home).

For lunch dessert, we scooped up spoonfuls of a lightly sweetened fruit salad (they call it Macedonia salad–am I the only one who has never heard fruit salad go by that name?) with slices of this cake.

When we visited my grandmother’s cousin, Felicina, she served us some Easter cake.  Its texture was similar to panettone and it seemed orange-scented.  This cake would make excellent french toast.

Piero fixed dinner that night.  My family knows I’m in love with vegetables, so he prepared this fresh vegetable soup with Grana Padano.  Each bowl contained one large chunk of the cheese that we could gnaw on a bit.

We ate the lightest, most tender white fish accompanied by oven-roasted potatoes and fresh arugula.

*If you’re headed to Parma, I highly recommend the place we stayed:  B & B il Borgo.  For a very reasonable price, we had an entire little apartment to ourselves.  The ground floor contained our charming kitchen (with wooden ceiling beams), fully stocked with breakfast food, snacks, coffees, and teas.  Up the spiral staircase, our bedroom was well-appointed and comfortable, with a clean and bright bathroom.  The hosts (who don’t live on-site) don’t speak English, but google translate was helpful.  Enza was so kind and drove us around to our destinations both mornings, saving us cab fare.  Oh, and the place is located within walking distance to anything you might want to see in the old town.

I don’t even know what to call this.  Sourdough bread egg bowl?  Eggs in cocotte in bread?  Egg/bread bomb?  Honestly, it is kind of a disaster in a cute little package.  Don’t get me wrong–it is a delicious disaster, but this is one of those experiments that I didn’t think I’d be photographing.

Here’s the problem.  I tend to over-sauce, over-stuff, and over-filling everything.  I want more frosting than cake, more marinara than pasta, and more toppings than sandwich bread.  This proclivity for the sloppiest food components leaves me, more often than not, with ketchup and mustard dripping down my hands and Michael shaking his head in resignation.

Once again, I over -filled my edible vessel with these sourdough egg bowls.  I expected to apologize for the sad attempt at dinner, but when these little bread bombs emerged from the oven, Michael forced me to photograph them because they looked pretty good.  And then they tasted really good.  Seriously.  Even though the salad they rested on was wilted by the time I served them, dinner was a hit.

This is sort of a formula if you’d like to try your own:

Sourdough Egg Bowl  (inspired by this post on thekitchn)

Preheat the oven to 400°.  Cut a cone out of the top of each individual sourdough roll, and remove some extra bread from the middle to make room for fillings.

For each bowl, mix about 1/2 teaspoon mustard (your choice), 1 teaspoon tomato paste, and 1 teaspoon olive oil in a cereal bowl.  Smear half of that mixture on the inside of the bread bowl and on the inside of the bread cap.  To the bowl, add 1 Tablespoon milk, salt and pepper, 1 Tablespoon chopped greens if you have them (I used arugula, but spinach would be nice), 1 Tablespoon feta or other cheese, and stir well.  Crack an egg into the bowl and lightly mix without breaking the yolk.  Dump the contents of the bowl into the cavity of the bread bowl, making sure to sop up the leftover stuff from the bowl with the bread cap.

Transfer the bread bowls and caps to a baking sheet and bake for 10-20 minutes, until the eggs are set to your liking (this is a big time range, but people like their eggs different ways).  Serve on top of a bed of dressed greens.

What you see above, folks, is the Northwestern Tiny Brown Bear in its natural habitat.  If you’re really quiet, he (and his name is Max) might let you perch next to him on his log, especially if you bring a picnic.  Max’s portrait is one in a series for this week’s Low-Commitment Projects, titled Natural Habitat.

Last time we visited Paris, Michael insisted we wait in the super long line for the privilege of ascending the Eiffel Tower.  He promised I’d never have to do it again, so I acquiesced.  It was a nice view and we took photos, but I especially enjoyed standing underneath the structure.

On this trip to Paris, I suggested we pay a visit to Angelina’s, the ridiculously touristy cafe and tea room.  We wore out our shoe leather hiking through throngs of tourists, only to find ourselves at the end of a long, but luckily brisk, line.  During our wait, we reflected that this was the Eiffel Tower for this trip–we never have to do it again.

We felt a little like cattle being herded into a very opulent feeding station.  The efficient waitstaff pushes as many visitors through the giant, gilded dining room as they can.  Angelina’s is famous for their hot chocolate, up top, which the server brings in a little pitcher.  You get the satisfaction of pouring it into your cup, then adding the cream to it yourself, to your desired amount (the cream is in the background of the photo just above).  My preference was to add ALL of the cream, naturally.  I’m not going to act all aloof–this touristy hot chocolate was excellent, if a bit overly sweet.

Michael and I also shared the other Angelina’s classic–the Mont Blanc.  We ordered the chocolate version because why would we not order the chocolate version?  I loved it much more than I expected.  I will try (and probably fail and try again) to make these at home.  I absolutely abhor the hairiness of the piped topping, so I’ll figure out an alternative to that.

Even though we don’t need (or want) to make a repeat visit, I’d say this tourist stop was worth it because it resulted in satisfied bellies.

AAAAaaarrrrrgh.  We learned (and hated) the lesson of Nothing Happens in Paris on Sunday.  After a few dismal disappointments, we found one little bright spot–Ble Sucré.  We were hoping to eat lunch at this charming, if out of the way, bakery, but alas, they don’t offer lunch on Sundays.  We ordered one apple-filled pastry to share as we wallowed in our disappointment in a park across the street.  As we alternated bites of the treat, we realized it was probably the best pastry we’d ever tried.  I scurried back across the road to buy another, but they were already gone.  Mini-aaarrgh.

Well, we eventually found something else open on Sunday–Christian Constant‘s chocolate shop / cafe.  Even though it seemed closed, we timidly asked if we could come in for treats.  Christian himself was working alone that day and seated us.  Along with some lovely tea, we ordered little cakes.  Michael’s, at the top, was the Makau–a chocolate and rum concoction.  Mine, just above, was a chocolate raspberry cake.  Wow.  We were so happy.  The happiness continued when I asked Christian if the ganaches he’d served us were a smoky Earl Grey flavor and he said, “Yes, you have a good nose.”  I floated out of the shop and clicked my heels down the street.

We dropped in Sadaharu Aoki (a Japanese/French patisserie) to pick up some to-go treats, since our stomachs needed a repast from sugar.  The mossy macaron artwork was a bonus.

When we returned to our hotel that night, we set out our haul–florentines from Ble Sucré, chocolate-covered macarons and a hot chocolate on a stick from Sadaharu Aoki.

Oh, heh heh.  Pierre Hermé is one of the other few establishments that was open on Sunday.  We bought an ispahan to bring back to the hotel for a late dessert.  Ours wasn’t as pretty after we toted it hither and yon and through the Pompidou museum (also open on Sunday), but it still looked remarkably appealing.  It is a rose, lychee, and raspberry dessert sandwiched by two large macaron halves.  Yeah, that was good.

We shopped at a ready-made food store for our dinner.  Classy?  No, but still really enjoyable.  It was maybe overpriced, but we were happy to have a lovely dinner in the comfort of our room for a reasonable sum.  We shared two sandwiches, a sun-dried tomato salad, asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, an apple, and a bottle of wine.

Cuisine de Bar’s website said they’d be open for breakfast.  I swear.  They weren’t open.  Don’t trust the internets.  Instead, we ducked into Poilâne, the famous bakery which runs Cuisine de Bar, next door (which we would’ve done anyway) and bought a couple of respectable pastries–chocolate for me and two apple ones for Michael.

Baillardran was one of our repeat visits because they were closed on Sunday.  We wanted to try their famous canelés in person.

We naturally had to sample each size to scientifically compare them.  The large one had the flair of its jaunty wrapper, the tiny one was cute because of its diminutive size, and the middle one was lovable just for the Jan Brady syndrome.

You may remember my affection for themed restaurants when we visited Soupateria in Bulgaria, and that fondness led us to the Bar à Soupes et Quenelles in Paris.  Giraudet, a maker of quenelles (dumplings), opened a rather successful little lunch spot to highlight their offerings.  I honestly can’t think of a comparable thing working in the US.  Michael ate one large quenelle and a carrot ginger soup.

This is my asparagus soup.  I also neglected to photograph the little bowl of small dumplings in red sauce that I enjoyed.

Michael’s dessert was this cute little almond flour cake, dimpled with raspberries.

In keeping with the soup theme, my dessert was a red fruits soup with a fresh cheese at the bottom.  This was amazingly refreshing, partially because it was well-chilled.

Our afternoon snack:  a mini loaf from Poilâne, studded with dried fruits.  How good can bread be?  Really, incredibly amazing, in this case.

Since I was getting a cold, we enjoyed another hotel dinner for our last evening in Paris.  We shared a baguette, a giant hunk of brie, a pear, a tomato salad, and a carrot salad, accompanied by a bottle of wine.

This tart was our edible welcome to Paris, and we needed it.  We’d arisen at 3:30 (after the worst hostel experience ever, which never actually resulted in sleep overnight) to leave Sofia, and when we arrived at our Paris hotel, we just stopped in to drop off our bags.  On our way to our first real destination, we grabbed one of these caramel-y, nutty tartlets to share.  No regrets.

We sought out a fancy bike shop, but it wasn’t where we thought it would be.  Our tired feet dragged us to Boulangépicier, Alain Ducasse‘s bakery/cafe combo (and yes, another irresistible portmanteau name).  It wasn’t quite as close as it looked on the map, so we were very ready for lunch when we arrived.  I ate this caramelized onion tart, criss-crossed by little fishes (yum), a cup of squash soup (eh, nothing special), and a yogurt dessert (I’d eat French yogurt for dessert anytime).  Michael’s lunch escaped photography, but he ordered a lovely little sandwich on a seedy roll, a delicious ham/pasta salad, and a lovely tarte au citron.

For dinner, we ordered the daily special crepes from the window at La Crêperie du Comptoir.  They included egg, cheese, ham, arugula, and tomato on buckwheat crepes.  Wow, what a wonderful, filling dinner, which seemed like a steal at 5 euros in Paris.  I will try to recreate these at home, maybe with the addition of a little mustard/mayo or sriracha/mayo.

We spent a morning walking down the Rue des Martyrs, popping into various shops and cafes.  The morning began at Rose Bakery, which we’d loved last time we visited.  Michael started with coffee and I with tea, and our mugs came flanked by a lemony cake.

Note:  here are some treats I made from the Rose Bakery cookbook.

We shared a hearty scone, accessorized with copious amounts of marmalade and butter.

Even though it was a little early, I asked if we could order the trio of salads.  Umm, I might have been bouncing in my seat as Rose herself served us.  These little salads were ideal because we knew we’d eat way too many sweets later in the day.  One salad contained shredded carrots, pepitas, and sunflower seeds; another was a horseradish-laced slaw; the third salad was a simple combination of perfectly crunchy spring radishes and cucumbers with sesame seeds.

With great effort, we pulled ourselves across the street to our next destination:  breakfast dessert at Arnaud Delmontel.  Although there were many fancier, prettier treats, we were somewhat limited by our lack of French language skills.  We used the “point at something near the register” method once again, and lucky us–we were surprised by the quality of this raspberry pastry bar.  We actually argued over the last bites, even though we were still stuffed from breakfast.

Our next treat purchase was this handsome little merengue-domed pastry from Le Valentin in the passage Jouffroy.  Ok, this was our next treat for immediate consumption; we did buy candies for future use at A la Mère de Famille.

One of our most memorable meals in Paris was when we visited the Marché des Enfants Rouges–the oldest covered market in the city.  We stopped at a food stall that offered only two or three menu items each day, and Michael and I both ordered the boeuf bourguignon.

This was one of the happiest lunches of my life.  We sat semi-outside, drank wine, and ate our beautiful meals (without spending an arm and a leg).