Prep
/prep/
- prepare (something); make ready
- prepare oneself for an event
Work
/wərk/
Activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result
A quick photo blast of what my weekends have been looking like...PREP WERK!!
For the majority, the weekends are regarded as a time for leisure whether it’s reading a good book, watching a movie, hiking or partying…For me, it’s taking on a whole different meaning. Unless I’m visiting my parents, going into the office, or cleaning around the house, the weekends are becoming filled with menu planning, grocery shopping & prepping for my cooking excursions. Each step is an adventure of its own.
Menu planning is drawing from my own experiences at various restaurants US & International, home cooking from Mom & friends, and my past cooking experiments (successes & of course, fails). I may not have traveled to all four corner of the world but every chance I get, I’m open and willing to try everything and appreciate the flavors & foods of all cultures. Honestly, why limit oneself?? LIVE and see how others live through food!! If you don’t, you’re missing out. It always surprises me how different foods are, and yet always reminds me of something familiar. Food has a way of filling your stomach, pulling at your memories and making your heart skip a beat…or is that just me and my never ending stomach pit??
Anyone who knows me knows that I hate shopping…for clothes that is. However, grocery/homeware shopping…I’m in heaven and can spend all day from market to farmer’s market looking at what’s available & what I could do with it all. It’s fun to see what’s seasonal+regional and if you find someone who’s knowledgeable of their product, they’ll tell you where it comes from, advise on what it pairs well with and what they themselves do with it. It brings us all together...food+community…we’ll come back to this later.
Work is work…but food prepping is WERK!!! As time consuming as it may be, I’m finding that it’s very soothing and therapeutic. Not just the chopping of the ingredients but it’s also the prepping process before food prepping. Checking off the list of ingredients, laying out all the items to chop in its proper order (and yes, there is an order…figuring that out is also a whole other learning curve), chopping & storing and later, packing everything into a cooler for transport! Phew, tiring but oh so satisfying. Preparing for a meal really makes you plan ahead and shows you that you might be a bit more OCD than you think…especially when you have an annoyingly small kitchen as I do. But it’s OK and great things come from it…
The past couple of weekends, our friends opened up their homes to me to cook a meal and I decided to make homemade lobster ravioli. Let’s be honest…you can NEVER go wrong with lobster & pasta!! Two Saturdays ago, I got to cook in Lucia & Raffie’s kitchen which is an amateur cook’s dream!! HUGE island with a vegetable wash sink that can hold an entire grocery store produce department and amazing stove & double oven!! And the kitchen comes with a very handsome taste tester (their 12 year old son) and a very enthusiastic & animated sous chef (a 9 year old daughter). I wish I had taken some pictures with the kids but I’ve learn and will do next time! I’ve made homemade Korean noodles before but had never used a pasta rolling machine. It was definitely a learning experience working the pasta roller and I have a few notes for beginners like me:
Use lots of flour for dusting the machine, the board, the pasta, your hands…just EVERYTHING! And dust as you roll!!
Start with a small chunk of dough and work it through the settings from lowest to thin. I started with a larger chunk at setting 5 and found that it doesn’t go through the roller and gets stuck. For my machine, I started at a 1 then 2, 4, 6 and finished at a 7 which I found was the perfect thickness for ravioli
If you’re making the pasta alone, like I did, it’s best to roll small pieces at a time. When rolling out pasta for ravioli, it gets really long and if you don’t help it roll out, it gets scrunched and uneven. Also, it dries out very quickly.
Another tip, when rolling with the final setting, softly pull on the pasta as it comes out. It helps make it a bit thinner and the elasticity of the pasta when cooked is so nice~
Unless you’re cooking the pasta immediately, freeze the ravioli as you go. I made 5-6 ravioli at a time and placed them on parchment paper (dusted, of course) in the freezer, immediately. It keeps the ravioli from getting dry or sticking.
Last Saturday, I made more lobster ravioli (perfecting my pasta rolling process) for a potluck dinner at Dave & Jill’s sunshine home in North Hollywood, CA. Our glamorous friend, Elena, was visiting from Spain and it called for our legendary potluck dinners. This particular group of fr-amily members have been gathering together for years and food is always involved! It’s been a long standing collaborative tradition of planning a menu of paired foods, cooking, drinking, & fun conversations. Our talks consist of everything imaginable…our origin stories, cooking secrets, life tips & passions, dreams and struggles. We encourage each other to be adventurous, listen to our troubles, advise each other on life and plans for our next meal together.
Thank you so much to Lucia+Raffie, Dave+Jill, Elena, RJ & my Teri!!
Happy meals & onward to our next adventure!
theCULINARY·IST
sidenote…As I’m chop, chop, chopping away in the kitchen, my inner soundtrack is forever blasting werk, werk, WERK, WERK, WERK!!
**a special THANK YOU to RJ Guillermo for his beautiful eye and photography**
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