Hobbies

 

When moving I discovered a bottle of Patxaran which one of my friends got me as a present. My cellar is filled with lovely exotic and not-so-well-known drinks from all over the world (being a member of BeWelcome.org has its advantages) and today was an excellent day to try my hand at creating a great recipe for Patxaran.

 

Patxaran (Basque from baso aran (wild plum); called Pacharán in Spanish) is a sloe-flavoured liqueur commonly drunk in Navarre, the Pyrenees and the rest of Spain.

The liqueur is made by soaking sloe berries, collected from the blackthorn, in an anise-flavoured spirit (anisette) with a small number of coffee beans and a vanilla pod for several months. It results in a light reddish-brown sweet liquid, around 25-30% alcohol by volume. It is served cold or on ice as a digestif.

The drink was essentially a home-made liqueur of rural Navarre, but became popular in the late 19th century. It was commercialised in the 1950s and became very popular outside Navarre. One theory holds that young Navarrans took bottles with them on National Service, popularising patxaran in the rest of Spain. There are now moves to ensure that the drink’s name is protected to ensure its quality, tradition and Navarrese identity. The regulator of Patxaran of Navarre insists that no colourings or flavourings are added, that the maceration is between one and eight months and on the amount of sloes used.

The oldest commercial brand is Zoco, first sold in 1956, founded by the family of Ambrosio Velasco, who had been producing patxaran in the Viana area since 1816 and now owned by Pernod Ricard. Other brands include Etxeko, Kantxa, Barañano Atxa and Baines. Seven million litres a year are commercially produced.

It is said in the valleys of Navarre that to eat the sloe berries after maceration can cause madness or lifelong aversion to patxaran.

Here is a great recipe for Pacharan:

1/6 Patxaran

1/6 Crème de Bananes

1/6 Lime juice

3/6 Pineapple juice

Just put everything in your cocktail shaker, shake for 20 seconds, pour it in a martini glass and add a cherry.

Source : Wikipedia.org

I have heard some people complain that they receive an error code #99 when operating their Canon Eos DSLR cameras. The Error code 99 is a general error, that could indicate a number of problems, most often related to the contact points between lens and camera, or between your storage medium and the camera.

I got the following advice from a Canon helpdesk in India when I had similar problems. Please try them first before starting to panic.

A. You receive an Error 99

1. Turn off your camera.
2. Remove the lens, any batteries, and your SD/CF card.
3. Allow the camera to sit without power for approximately 15 minutes.
4. Insert a fully charged battery, and turn on the camera. Do NOT insert your memory card.

5. Depress the shutter button as you would to take a picture.

Does the “ERR 99″ message appear? If it does, then the camera should be
serviced. Bring it in to the closest Canon dealer or the shop where you bought it.  If it does not, then please proceed to the next set of steps:

1. Turn off the camera.
2. Insert the SD/CF card.
3. Turn on the camera.
4. Format the SD/CF card in the camera. Make sure you made a backup of all the pictures on the card.
5. Depress the shutter button as you would to take a picture.

Does the “ERR 99″ message appear? If so, then the CF card is the most
likely source of the issue. Try using a different card.

If the message does not appear, please complete the following steps:

1. Turn off the camera.
2. Clean the lens contacts by gently rubbing them with a pencil eraser
or soft cloth. Be careful that you do not let any debris fall into the
camera body.
3. Reattach your lens.
4. Turn on the camera.
5. Depress the shutter button as you would to take a picture.

If the “ERR 99″ message only appears when one particular lens is
attached, then that lens should be examined by a service technician.

If you see the “ERR 99″ with a different Canon lens attached, then the
camera should be serviced.

One of the hottest actresses at the moment is Alexis Bledel. Her name creeps up on every search list, and pictures of her are everywhere. But who is she?

Alexis Bledel (born September 16, 1981) is an American actress and fashion model. She is most widely known for her role as Rory Gilmore in the television series Gilmore Girls.

It has been announced that Bledel will star in Post Grad, which is premiering August 21, 2009, alongside Jane Lynch, Michael Keaton, and Carol Burnett. She has recently been cast in a new movie entitled The Letters, which is anticipated to be released in 2010. The Letters is a drama / thriller film by director Todd Fjelsted and is currently in pre-production. Bledel is set to star opposite Scott Porter in the film The Good Guy, which premiered at Tribeca Film Festival April 26, 2009. In this, Porter plays a Wall Street businessman whose life begins to fall apart when he helps out a new salesman. Bledel will play Beth, Porter’s girlfriend. Anna Chlumsky of My Girl will play her friend. She was also a guest star on the two-hour series finale of ER, playing new intern Dr. Julia Wise.

If you want to find out more about Alexis, check out her Wikipedia page

 

Did you hear about Sister Anastazja Pustelnik? In Poland this nun is just as popular as Jamie Oliver is in Britain. She cooks every day for the Jezuits of Krakow and now books with her recipes are selling like…well, hot cakes A book with 123 cake recipes sold over 400,000 copies. Not bad for a cooking nun.

Maybe I should also write a book : “Vegetarian Cooking with Brother Frank” (or in Polish: Wegetariañskie Gotowanie z Bratem Frankiem)

Here is already a nice recipe for Ratatouille, adapted for both metric users and those who are metrically-challenged

Chilli Ratatouille (serves 4 priests or 5 nuns)

Ingredients

2 aubergines (USA = eggplant)
3 courgettes (USA = zucchini)
a quarter cup of olive oil (extra vergin)
1 big onion
2 (sissy) to 4 (wolverine) cloves of garlic
1 to 2 teaspoons of white sugar
1 spoon of chilli powder or freshly cut cilli
salt & pepper (for seasoning)
2 tablespoons of vinegar (preferably red wine)
250 grams / 8 oz can of whole peeled tomatoes or even better: a bunch of fresh tomatoes
a quarter cup of dry white wine

Procedure

1. Wash the aubergines and cut them into small cubes

2. Wash and slice the courgettes into long thin slices. Sprinkle everything with salt and set aside for 20 to 30 minutes. This removes any bitter taste that may rise from the aubergines.

3. Rinse the salt off under running water.

4. Cut the onion into thick wedges and crush the garlic. Yeah baby, crush it!

5. Heat the olive oil in a deep frying pan (so you can easily stir everything) and add the onions and sauté until they are golden brown.

6. Add the courgette, aubergine and garlic and again cook until golden.

7. Mix the sugar, red wine vinegar, chilli, tomatoes and wine.

8. Cover and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes.

9. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve with fresh baguette or with rice. You can also serve it as a side dish if you wish, it goes well with fish and on spaghetti.

Eruca sativa (syn. E. vesicaria subsp. sativa (Miller) Thell., Brassica eruca L.), also known as rocket or arugula, is an edible plant. It is a species of Eruca native to the Mediterranean region, from Morocco and Portugal east to Jordan and Turkey. It is closely related to Eruca vesicaria and included by some botanists in that either as a subspecies E. vesicaria subsp. sativa or not distinguished at all;

It is an annual plant growing to 20–100 cm tall. The leaves are deeply pinnately lobed with four to ten small lateral lobes and a large terminal lobe. The flowers are 2–4 cm diameter, arranged in a corymb, with the typical Brassicaceae flower structure; the petals are creamy white with purple veins, and the stamens yellow; the sepals are shed soon after the flower opens. The fruit is a siliqua (pod) 12–35 mm long with an apical beak, and containing several seeds (which are edible). The species has a chromosome number of 2n = 22.
Vernacular names include Garden Rocket, Rocket (British English), Eruca, Rocketsalad, jarjīr (Arabic), Arugula (American English), Rucola (Italian), Rukola (Macedonian, Serbian, Slovenian, Polish), Rugola (Italian), Rauke (German), Roquette (French), Rokka (Greek), Roka (Turkish), Ruca (Catalan), Beharki (Basque), Voinicică (Romanian) Rúcula, Oruga and Arúgula (Spanish), Rúcula (Portuguese), Ruchetta (Italian) and Rughetta (Italian). The term arugula (variations of Italian dialects) is used by the Italian diaspora in Australia and North America and from there picked up as a loan word to a varying degree in American and Australian English, particularly in culinary usage. The names ultimately all derive from the Latin word eruca, a name for an unspecified plant in the family Brassicaceae, probably a type of cabbage.

Source: wikipedia