Istria in March....

....still remains very close to my heart. 

It was a quick visit - one and a half day - and from what it looks it is going to be the last. Time is running out and there are still many more places I need to visit before we head back to Athens in August. 

This time is was all about my favourite places. Porec and Limski Kanal, Motovun and Rovinj. And about the food. Even though it was very early in the tourist season and most restaurants hadn't opened we were thoroughly satiated with very generous portions of meat, truffles and handmade pasta at the restaurants we did find open. I will never forget the steak tartar we ate at Konoba Daniela near Veleniki. It was made right in front of us by a very experienced waiter (and very tall, now that I mention it, all the waiters were freakishly tall at that restaurant!) who mixed ten different spices and herbs with fresh raw minced beef to produce the most amazing, velvety and so intensely flavoured paste. We spread it on toasted bread and for a minute I thought that this is how food haven must feel like.  It was so good I didn't even think to take a picture before we devoured it all. 

The weather was very good to us and we enjoyed every minute of the lovely sunny days. 

We stayed in Funtana, a small village a few kilometres south of Porec, at a small B&B. I love spending time in small family-owned places like these. We were warmly welcomed with a glass of homemade medica - pronounced me-di-tsa - which is a sweet honey liqueur and had a simple but very filling Sunday morning breakfast.

As you will see from my photographs below, my obsession with Istrian doors, windows and cats is still going strong and I was very happy to use my new 45mm lens on something other than food. 

A lone window pane at an old house in Motovun

George and our friend George - walking on the cobblestoned alleys of Motovun. There is no typo in the previous sentence. Our friend's name is George!

This is why I love cats...they always find the best place to take a nap!

Old door in Motovun

  

The view from above in Motovun

Spring is starting to bloom

The intense blue of this door, enough to brake the monotony of the greying old stones, drew my eyes like a fly is drawn to a burning light. 

The beautiful light of the golden hours

The lower hills around Motovun are starting to come alive and the green is overtaking the brown. It is lonely at the top.

Motovun is not by the sea. It's way inland, a village with stone backsteets and old houses, perched on the top of a hill rising from the flat of the planes. It is a magical place but also a very solitary place. A place where you can sit for hours, contemplate life while  looking at the valley beneath you. Maybe even write a book about it. 

Rovinj on the other hand, is alive and full of people and colours and art. I haven't seen so many galleries and artists gathered in one place in the whole of Croatia as I have seen in Rovinj. In every little backstreet (and there are so many), in every small courtyard there are shops selling paintings and clothes, jewellery and pottery all made by local artists. I remember the first time I was there in June 2012, I was entranced by the animated atmosphere of the days and the vibrancy of the nights. It is a beautiful place. A place where I would love to live for the rest of my life.

The colourful streets of Rovinj. Work is slow as the tourist season has not yet opened

Different shades of blue.

On top of the hill the Church of St. Ephemia with the iconic campanile

There are those kinds of places that really speak to you in a language that only makes sense to you and nobody else. Places that pull me towards them and while I am away continue to feed me with an endless stream of pictures, memories and wishes to come back and experience them again. Rovinj and Motovun are like these places to me. I will always keep them close to my heart. 

Deep Fried Caramel Bananas

I made a firm commitment to myself. 

Let's call it a "35th birthday resolution". 

I will try to post something new at least once a week. 

Between The Ultimate Gluten Free Cookie Book Bake and Photograph Challenge and my weekly (strike that - bi-weekly) participation to the French Fridays with Dorie online cooking community I will have plenty to keep me occupied.

Since I will be spending a lot more time in this small corner of the blogosphere I decided to take a long, hard look at my blog. My shabby looking Box of Stolen Socks is in desperate need of a "beautifying" intervention. 

But I live in a foreign country were people speak a beautiful language which I have yet to master. Five and a half years in Croatia and I can only manage to greet people good morning, say thank you and basically trick everyone into thinking that I can speak their tongue. I am able to understand about 1/5 of what they say to me provided that they speak slowly and don't use very extravagant words. 

To my defence it is a hard language to learn. At least that's what all my Croatian friends are telling me to make me feel better, I guess.

My rudimentary knowledge of the language is enough to see me through my daily shopping trips to the market, but for more adventurous endeavours like let's say  finding a web designer and working together to create a new look for my Box or even help me move to a self hosting WordPress platform (oh the dream!!!) feels like deciding to climb mount Olympus in my flip flops. 

That's why I decided to spare myself the anxiety and the cost of lingual and cultural misunderstandings and wait until we move back to Athens, in the summer, where I would be able to have equally frustrating misunderstandings with my web designer there. Hey! at least they will be in Greek and I will be able to understand what  they are calling me behind my back and cordially reciprocate :) 

I had given up on the whole beautifying intervention idea and then last week I came across a blog called Something Swanky and a very helpful tutorial about how to create your own blog header using PicMonkey.

I  did not need a lot of persuasion and after a few minutes .... voilà.... I uploaded my very own, custom made header. It is nothing fancy. Very minimalist and clean but I now know how to adjust and redesign it if I need to. Next stop background!!!!

Now you are right to ask me what do bananas and blog headers have in common? Nothing really. I just though of sharing with you my experience with making something for the first time. And I am sure many of you will find this tutorial quite useful. 

So designing my blog  header was not the only thing I did for the first time these past few days. 2014 started with a string of  firsts for me. On day 1 I decided to make a desert that I have never ever thought I will ever make at home. 

Deep Fried  Bananas.

 Deep fried like the ones you have at a Chinese restaurant and say to yourself that this is an indulgence you are only allowed to have once a year! 

Not only did I made them at home, I also made caramel for the first time in my life. It was scary. I was whisking the sugar and the water for more than 10 minutes and then suddenly it started to take colour and I had to act quickly and get it out of the fire before it turned black. I regret to say that I was not so quick enough and I might have burned it a bit --actually a lot--  But ultimately it was a very rewarding experience!

I don't care how cheesie it sound but yes the first time is always difficult. Chances are that you are not going to get everything right and you are going to mess up a bit more but what I learned from my brief encounter with hot sugary water is that if you decide to move past your fear of disappointment and self pity and try again you are going to make it better and better every time you try. My Caramel Bananas are the most delicious proof of that.

Have you done anything new and for the first time in these first 20 days of 2014?

I really don't have to say much about this recipe. Sweet, soft bananas, deep fried in light - did I mention gluten free?? batter and then coated with hot, crispy caramel! Sinful but I could eat this everyday for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 

The original recipe calls for a flour mix made with potato starch, brown rice flour and xanthan gum. I could not find potato starch in my local healthy food store so I used a commercial universal gluten free flour. I have used it before and I was quite happy with its performance. 

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Deep Fried Caramel Bananas

Adapted from "Seriously Good Gluten Free Baking" by Phil Vickery

Serves 4

Ingredients

100 gr gluten free flour - I used this brand 

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder - make sure it is gluten free!!! It should say on the packaging!!

300 ml vegetable oil, for frying

4 bananas

2 tablespoons sesame seeds

200 gr sugar

Instructions

In a medium bowl, mix the flour with the baking powder and gradually stir in 150 ml of cold water until you have a thick, smooth paste. It should be thick enough to be able to coat the bananas so it is better to add the water little by little, stir, see the consistency and add as much as you need. 

In a medium but deep saucepan, heat the oil until it is very hot - Phil Vickery in his book suggests that "the oil is hot enough when a cube of bread sizzles and turns golden in a few seconds" - 

Slice the bananas into 4 pieces each and dip them into the batter. Carefully put one or two into the hot oil and deep fry them for about 1 1/2 minutes until they turn golden. Turn them with a clean spoon so that they fry uniformly. 

Pull them out using a slotted spoon and let them drain of any excess oil on kitchen paper. Deep fry all the bananas is batches of 2 or 3 and then prepare for the caramel.

In a small heavy based saucepan, put the sugar an 4 tablespoons of cold water. Stir gently over low heat until all the sugar crystals are dissolved. This might take some time! It is very important not to stop stirring until all the sugar is dissolved!!! Then stop stirring and let it bubble until it turns into a dark golden colour. Then remove from the heat. 

Pick up the bananas with two wooden toothpicks or longer skewers and gently roll them into the hot caramel sauce. Transfer them onto a sheet of baking paper set over a wire rack, sprinkle them with sesame seeds and leave them for a few minutes until the caramel hardens. Serve them with ice cream !

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I am sharing this recipe at

Catch a Glimpse Thursday 

"The Night Circus"

Everybody is going bonkers about Halloween! Both in the real world and in the cyber universe! I am going to be bold here and say something that might make me invidious, obnoxious, and maybe, offensive...I don't care about Halloween. I don't understand the fixation with scary pumpkins, ghosts, bloody eyes and other such gruesome scenes. Everywhere I look I see those bluntly exploiting, consumerist campaigns to make us do more, eat more, and ultimately spend more on things that are actually irrelevant to the real tradition of this day. We don't celebrate it in Greece and even here in Croatia (a very catholic country) people pay more attention to the day after Halloween. November 1st is a day of remembering those who left from this world to start their eternal journey. The days preceding Svi Sveti (All Saint's Day) are borderline frantic. Zagreb is full of people and flowers and small red lanterns which will be lit on Dan Svi Svetih and create a river of red light. OK all these take place in cemeteries and the light of the lanterns might remind you of blood but this is as gruesome as it gets! 

The Night Circus has nothing to do with Halloween and I did not chose to write about it today because of this. I want to write about it because it is extraordinary and enchanting, mysterious yet unaffected in its writing style. 

Many months ago, way before I started this here blog, I read a post written by a food writer describing a dessert she had created inspired by a book titled "The Night Circus". I had just bought my Kindle and I immediately went online and bought the book. That's how I am, very impulsive about the books I buy and read. I downloaded it and left it there on my virtual bookshelf for a long time. Since then many things concerning this book have happened. Hundreds, maybe thousands of reviews have been written. Some positive and glowing dubbing it the best book of that year, others not so much, pointing to weaknesses and problems.

I am not going to write a review. I don't know how to write reviews. I am just going to put down some of my thoughts about this book... 

I drunk this book like a soothing, remedial potion. I read somewhere that "The Night Circus" can cure cancer. It was meant as a joke and you might laugh, but at some point while reading it, the same thought crossed my mind. If it cannot cure cancer, it can definitely help alleviate stress and anxiety. Why is that though? I cannot say for sure. Is it the fantastical world of magic? Is it the circus itself that brings childhood memories of astounding miracles happening in a place like nowhere else? I cannot put my finger on it but I think it might be because it is a book that does not demand anything from the reader, only to open his mind and imagine being in that mystical place, "Le Cirque de Reves". 

And it is really easy to do so because the author offers him exquisite, detailed blueprints of anything he might need to get there.

This Halloween don't get disarranged by all those asking you to become absorbed by their marketing strategies for bigger, more orange, even scarier, bloodier and darker delirium.  Stay true to the actual tradition of All Hollow's Eve and if you can spare a moment read "The Night Circus". It will take you where you want to go like the simplest fairytale did when we were children. 

Walnut Liqueur

When we moved into our apartment in Zagreb, our very kind Croatian landlady gave us, as a house-warming gift, a bottle of home-made walnut liqueur her mother had made the previous year. Thus, I discovered the bitter sweet, highly addictive, liquid heaven that is walnut liqueur a.k.a orahovica. 

Walnut liqueur is dark in colour, aromatic and quite fiery in taste. It is made from unripe (still green) walnuts and lots of good quality alcohol. Over the years I have made several fruit liqueurs from cherries and sour cherries, strawberries blueberries and cranberries, with walnuts thought I never tried it. When I tasted Zrinka's orahovica I was hooked by the rich walnut, coffee and vanilla aroma which becomes spicy and bitter-sweet with a long coffee finish when it hits your palette.

I asked for the recipe and in June last year I raided one of the dozen walnut trees growing around our building and gathered a bucketful of small green walnuts. A word to the wise...wear gloves when picking and handling the walnuts, their tannins are so strong they are going to colour your skin brown for a very long time. 

I found it very difficult to cut the walnuts, they are hard and slippery and I really treasure all my fingers, so I crushed them with a stone.

I used rakija - the Croatian version of a non-anise flavoured grape brandy, which is almost the same as the Greek Tsipouro or the Italian Grappa  - but you can use very good quality vodka if you cannot find any of the above.

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Walnut Liqueur

Ingredients
1 litre of grape brandy (without anise for example rakija, tsipouro, grappa) or good quality vodka
15 large whole green walnuts, crushed with a stone
1 whole lemon, quartered
1 vanilla pod, halved
200 g white sugar
10 toasted espresso coffee grains
10 cloves

Instructions

1. Mix all the ingredients in a large glass jar, cover and leave it exposed to the sun for 40 days. 
2. Try to shake the jar every couple of days for the sugar to dissolve. The liquid will turn dark brown gradually as time passes. 
3. When it’s ready to bottle, filter the liqueur through a cheesecloth or a coffee filter and pour into a clean bottle. 
4. This liqueur will keep for years stored in a cool, dry place, that is if you don't drink it all in one go....

Dubrovnik in July...

Churches, Tiles and Boats

...is breathtakingly beautiful, suffocatingly crowded and truly one of a kind. Shiny stones and yellowish - orange roof tiles; steep, high, impregnable walls; frightful looking rocks frothing from the never ending mania of the sea; and blue, all shades of blue and green, everywhere...

A Secret, a Castle and Three Songs

"I don't know" This has been my answer to all questions for the better part of the past week. 

My mother came to visit. I saw her for the first time in two years. At the airport she seemed the same as I remembered. At home she acted the same way I remembered. We talked about this and that and she mentioned that she belongs to a new club...the Recovering Breast Cancer Patients Club!

Two years, not a word. Two sessions of chemotherapy, not a word. Two sessions of radiation, not a word. One breast missing, not a word. 

How do I feel? I don't know. I have no words.

She assures me everything now is gone, eliminated, defeated! I don't know...

She said nobody knew, it was best that way for her. I don't know...

She asks me not to be angry, emotional, scared. I don't know...

How do I feel? I don't know...

What do I feel? I don't know...

She wants to forget everything and continue from where she left off,  two years ago. That I know..

So from now on only new experiences. 

Like going to a three-day rock music festival with lots of mosquitoes, music, beer and walking for miles and miles because we lost our way and then lying on the grass and getting covered with ants but loving every minute of it, even the hideously green fluorescent wristband.

Like visiting a castle and climbing the wooden stairs to experience the magnificence of nature and the glory of man.

Like going to Dubrovnik next Thursday...

As for the songs...

They are for me...

Because if there is one thing I know is that I love music...

Just as I love my mum.