Tapas, Torrijas, and Tom Cruise

Correction to the title: I did not cook tapas. That was a boldfaced lie that sought to substitute fact for flow. Nonfiction be damned, I love me an alliteration.




COOKING FOR MY SPANISH FAMILY
Anger, laughter, bewilderment, sweat, tears, German frustration and European liberation. Talking about the tearing down of the Berlin Wall I am not, for these words of revolution pertain solely to my fight to cook my host mom dinner; to do the impossible – cook for the woman who does not eat. Ever.

Now Marisa Alonso Sanchez is an interesting breed. Every day, she smokes about 20-30 cigarettes and drinks 1 cup of coffee in the morning, and that is all. No dinner, no breakfast, no snacks and not even a single piece of candy. How she is still alive, I haven’t the slightest clue. It seems she has more of a place in the Thriller video than in Salamanca. Obviously, she posed an incredible threat to my presentation grade; in fact, she actually went as far to dupe me out of the chance to finish my presentation on time by forcing me to eat the meal she made on the night when in fact it was supposed to be me a cook, cook, cooking away. This is where the anger part of the topic sentence came into play, yet with much meditation I thought: maybe this is a way of paying off whatever Karma debt I racked up in my last go down the trail? Entonces...

“Well how in the hell are you going to get this woman to eat, Tyler you incredulous swine?” I asked myself. The best idea I had to prepare myself for such a task was to flick on the Spanish dub of Mission Impossible.

After 2 hours of Tom Cruise goodness, I was equally as lost… perhaps more confused as I have never in my 20 years of life understood that God-forsaken movie. I am rambling. Cutting to the chase, Marisa and I went to verbal war over dinner rights. Having the upper hand, her Spanish flex was no match for my language-confused brain, and she even went to hit below the belt once or twice when talking about my cooking. Me, who thought myself proud as Napoleon, was finally forced to face my Waterloo; however, all was not lost. What I did manage to get out of the conversation was to be able to cook dinner for myself on Friday night to make up for her withholding my presentation. The method is as follows:

I chose to make a family “recipe” of sorts, if one can even append to it this title. I prefer something more on the lines of Jazz Improvisation in the Kitchen. Anyways it involved frying freshly peeled prawns with parsley and garlic in olive oil, and it is served over spaghetti, although I am sure any type of pasta will do. For desert, I made Torrijas, a sort of Spanish French toast, out of thick, hearty slices of sweet bread soaked in milk and sugar with the essence of a freshly squeezed lime and an orange. One then would proceed to fry it in a pan of olive oil; however, finding myself lacking that substance after the pasta had ran me dry (pun intended), I had to settle for sunflower. Once crisp and brown on both sides, but pudding-like in the center (like Barry White), I made one final addition and added a dollop of sweet vanilla ice cream to the top of the warm, crisp, doughy bread with a hint of citrus. I was in complete heaven.

So, cooking for my family turned out to be a complete failure as well as my desires of understanding Mission Impossible for the first time ever. What I did accomplish, however, was cooking an incredible Mediterranean dish for myself with a hint of España for desert, and let me tell you, my stomach was incredibly pleased.

Andy, I hope this makes up for my atrocious presentation on Thursday. I am in France surfing at the moment, but I will upload a video entitled Cooking with Tyler Hellner to youtube when I get back (after a swift edit on the train ride). See you all Monday.
TZA, the Tedious.
<--Me in France.