Susan Solo – Photographer | Traveler | Adventurer

Category: cooking

  • Lares Adventure – Day 4: Huacahuasi

    Lares Adventure – Day 4: Huacahuasi

    First thing after a lovely breakfast spread on Day Four of the Lares Adventure, our group set off on a morning waterfall hike. At around 8:30am, we wound our way through the sunlit valley of Huacahuasi to see that the village was already awake and alive with chores of the day. We spotted women doing laundry and tending to their children and livestock, while the men were away in the hills working with their crops, save for Valentine who was our 911 horse handler for the day. (The 911 horses come along with hikers, carrying medical supplies in case of emergencies.)

    One of the highlights of our morning was getting to visit with a local highlands woman and her family. This is another experience that I’m sure we couldn’t have arranged on our own. Touring the inside of their home gave us some insight as to how the Quechua people live, with simple means and basic provisions, and how truly happy they are with a lifestyle of having what they need versus unnecessary stuff.

    I noticed that they have electricity, but it is powering a single-bulb light fixture and a small sewing machine rather than an over-abundance of electronic items. Their nutrition comes from potatoes, quinoa, vegetables, and the guinea pigs we spotted rustling around under a pile of hay rather than processed food and sodas. I came away from our visit with a new appreciation for a more minimalist approach to living. (Says the girl hiking through the village with a GoPro, an iPhone, AND a camera, but I’d like to try to simplify in other areas!)

    We continued on through the village and up into the mountainside in search of the waterfall. Our group shared the trail with quite a few furry friends along the way. Earlier in the trip I remember wondering if we would see any llamas or alpacas while hiking and the answer was yes…indeed we would see a lot of them. If you’ve ever wondered about the difference between alpacas and llamas, my understanding is that alpacas are smaller with shorter faces and ears, while llamas are sometimes double the size of an alpaca and they have long, banana-shaped ears with long muzzles.

    That, and alpacas make better joke material: “Want to go on a picnic? Alpaca lunch!” (Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here all night.)

    Here Eddie and crew are waiting for me to climb some rocks and make it up the hill. Hiking is hard when you’re constantly trying to capture everything on camera and on video! I did manage to put down the devices and enjoy the scenery every once in a while, but that’s hard when everything is so interesting and photogenic! And I don’t have any facts for you about the waterfall or the trail. It was simply a beautiful hike for taking in the scenery, fresh air, and Vitamin D.

    Back at the lodge, we attended a short cooking class where we learned to make Peruvian causa, a layered dish made with tuna fish and potatoes. No stove or oven was involved so there was nothing for me to burn, and despite my deep dislike for tuna, this was actually pretty good. (Mine was made with no mayonnaise, of course.) After the class we ate our creations as an appetizer before another wonderful meal.

    I can’t think of anything better after a hike and a hearty meal than an afternoon in the outdoor Jaccuzi overlooking the valley. Even in mid-July, the air was quite crisp at this altitude, so we were thankful for the toasty temperature of the water. Such a nice feature of Huacahuasi Lodge!

    Next post: our mountain biking adventure through Urubamba and a trip to a brewery all the way out in the middle of the Sacred Valley!

  • Photo Friday – Cookie Class

    In the spirit of the holiday season, I have a very festive photo to share with you! A friend and I took a cookie decorating class together last week where I learned how to frost sugar cookies with royal icing using the outline and flood method. We had a great time! I love learning new crafty things, especially ones that I can eat after I’m done.

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  • Photo Friday – Scones

    A few years ago I resolved to buckle down and really spend some time learning how to cook. My plan was to experiment, and practice my way through a well-rounded list of food types. I did practice quite a lot, though somewhere along the way I dropped the ball on photographing my experiments and checking things off my list. This past weekend, inspired by our recent Ireland and Scotland travels, I attempted baking scones from scratch and they turned out great! I was a little intimidated to use my food processor for only the second time ever, but I watched a few videos on youtube and it turns out that the food processor isn’t too difficult to use. The scones looked pretty photogenic, so I got the camera out for a little scone photo shoot. I’m officially checking that one off the list! Oh, and if you want to make these too, I used a New York Times recipe.

    scones_blog

     

  • Learning to Cook: Vegetable Summer Rolls

    So, here it is – the end of 2013! That was fast, right?! How did you do on your resolutions? I’m going to give myself a B+. My one resolution for 2013 was to learn to cook. I created a really organized plan for myself, and while I started off strong, I sort of veered off-plan for the rest of the year. I did do a LOT more cooking this year than usual. I’m pretty sure I completed several of the “lessons” I assigned to myself, but I just didn’t track it and photograph my progress as often as I had intended. So, I’m going to leave my learn-to-cook plan open-ended, and just work on it and complete the list whenever I can.

    Here’s one of the recipes I did remember to photograph! Vegetable Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce. I order these every time I eat at Big Bowl in Reston. I crave them regularly, so I decided to try to replicate the recipe at home. I couldn’t find a recipe that sounded exactly like the Big Bowl summer rolls, so I combined about four different recipes to come as close as I could to theirs. I ended up making way too much peanut sauce (so if you make this recipe you might want to cut it in half), but I feel like it was pretty close in taste. And the recipe actually went really well! Not a lot can go wrong here – there’s no way to overcook or undercook them, so this just might be my niche!

    summer_rolls_fb

    Vegetable Summer Rolls with Peanut Sauce
    Ingredients
    • 3/4 cup natural-style creamy peanut butter
    • 1/3 cup water
    • 3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
    • 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice (from about 1 1/2 medium limes)
    • 4 1/2 teaspoons soy sauce
    • 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
    • 2 1/4 teaspoons chile-garlic paste
    • 1 medium garlic clove mashed to a paste
    • 1/2 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
    • 6 oz dried rice vermicelli
    • 12 round rice papers (8″ diameter)
    • 1 head butter or Boston Bibb lettuce, leaves separated
    • 1 cup julienned or shredded carrots
    • 1/2 cup julienned red bell peppers
    • fresh basil or Thai basil leaves
    Instructions
    1. For the sauce: Whisk the first eight ingredients (peanut butter through sesame oil) together in a medium bowl; set aside.
    2. For the summer rolls: Use a cake pan or pie dish and fill it with about 1″ of warm water. Dip one rice paper round in the dish for a few seconds. Lift the rice paper and let the water drip off. Place it on clean, dry work surface. Blot the top of the rice paper with a paper towel. Work one roll at a time.
    3. Top the wet rice paper with lettuce, vermicelli noodles, carrots, bell pepper, and basil leaves. Roll up the rice paper tightly, folding each side in before completing the roll. The wrapper is self-sealing. Use a sharp knife to cut the roll into slices. Repeat with each rice paper.

     

  • Learning to Cook: Update

    Wow, how is it already more than half-way through April?! I mean, I know how that happened, but I just realized that I haven’t updated my blog in a few weeks, and I certainly haven’t told you about my learning to cook progress. Somewhere around the third recipe, I realized a few things. 1.) It’s a lot of work to learn the recipe AND photograph a dish! It’s definitely fun to do the photographs, but it’s even more fun to eat. Which brings me to my next point: 2.) I’m usually reeeally hungry by the time I’ve finished cooking. So instead of photographing my newly learned recipe to show you what I accomplished (or didn’t accomplish)…I eat the evidence! Immediately. Sorry about that.

    But I have been practicing! A lot, actually. I try to cook at least one or two new recipes each week, sometimes even as many as four. And in the interest of catching up a bit, I’m going to post a few links to successful recipes I’ve tried and officially cross them off my list. A few of these are duplicate “lessons,” but I figure it can’t hurt to repeat. (Especially with my track record of getting it right the first time.)

    Shown from left-to-right:

    • Chicken and Mushrooms in Garlic White Wine Sauce – recipe and photo courtesy of skinnytaste.com. This recipe is in our regular weeknight dinner rotation. I actually skipped the flour the first time to see how it would turn out (and to keep the dish clean-eating), and it was great! I haven’t used flour in it since.
    • Pan-Seared Chicken with Mushroom Sage Sauce – recipe and photo courtesy of Cook’s Country Magazine. This was actually kind of a pain to make. The recipe had a lot of steps, and I don’t usually like to eat chicken with the bones still in, but it was good to learn how to work with it.
    • Papparedelle in Saffron Cream – recipe and photo courtesy of foodnetwork.com. I made this as a side dish to sirloin steaks, and it was a big hit (despite getting a stomachache from the dairy)!
    • Slow-Cooker Asian Pork with Noodles and Broccoli – recipe and photo courtesy of Real Simple Magazine. We loved this one – it made a huge batch, and thankfully the leftovers were just as good.
    • Orange Shrimp – recipe and photo courtesy of heartmindandseoul.com. Super easy, although I didn’t grill the shrimp. We aren’t allowed to grill on our balcony, so if you want to grill you have to do it on the driveway – awkward, right?! Plus it has been so cold here lately, too cold to grill outside, so I just threw the shrimp in the pan to cook and it came out just fine. I guess I could have used a grill pan, but I have never really been successful with it. I guess that’s something I should work on, huh?
    • Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Balsamic Vinegar – recipe and photo courtesy of whiteonricecouple.com. I’m calling this a successful recipe because I think I cooked them correctly, but Chris doesn’t love Brussels Sprouts in general.

    So there you have it! A round of the recipes I considered successful. Yes, there have been a few that were less successful, or nearly inedible. I made a Spicy Shrimp recipe that was incredibly salty, and that’s coming from someone who loves salt. I think it went wrong when I read 1/2 teaspoon of salt as 1/2 Tablespoon of salt. And that was on top of using regular soy sauce instead of reduced-sodium soy sauce like the recipe indicated. Oops. We drank extra water that night.

    More updates soon! And photos, unless I’m just too quick to eat the results (which is always a good thing since it means I didn’t burn it, under-cook it, or otherwise ruin it).