Ethnic delights

In my marriage package I got a following things:
1. Wonderful husband (of course)
2. Long and unpronounceable surname.
3. Big amount of relatives
4. Ethnic delights.

The story is that my husband has a half of Bukharian blood. And all the things that I have mentioned above are from that half. Since my husband also reads my blog I'm not going to talk about the relatives and the surname :-), I'll concentrate on Ethnic delights point.
Since they lived in Uzbekistan, they cook a lot of traditional food as pilaf, samosa and etc.
In the beginning of my "friendship" with my husband, I was very excited by all those dishes. And also it seemed very complicated to cook it. Hundreds of times I was watching my father in law is cooking and I didn't take a risk to cook it by myself.
But now, when I'm on the half way to be chef, it's just as simple as that :-)
The most popular and delicious dish is Pilaf. There is no celebration without a Pilaf. Also, there are different types of it: sweet with raisins and prunes, with different kinds of meat and etc. The traditional one should be cooked with lamb and on lamb fat, carrots, rice, garlic and ground cumin.
Last weekend I decided to cook Pilaf for our friends visit. My preparation for it have started a weeks before, I was looking for right pan. The pan for Pilaf should be cast iron, round and tall shape. After a long search everywhere (Internet, shops) I gave up to buy one for now.
It's very expensive in UK, as everything here. And for now I prefer to spend money on something else. And in addition, as I told before I'm on the half way to be chef, so the chef should be able to cook in every pan and the dish should be delicious.
As a fan of healthy cooking I used the beef instead the lamb, and olive oil.
The result was just perfect! Now I can destroy the myth of cooking the Pilaf - it's a question of the experience!

Intermediate cuisine.

Intermediate cuisine is the second course in Cuisine trilogy. This course is about different regions of France and their kitchens.
It turned out, that there are 22 French regions, and all of them have their own kitchen. The difference between them is everywhere. It could be in cooking methods, using particular meat, the presentation of the dish and etc. After this course I'll know not only how to cook, I also will learn the geography. My husband always complains that I don't know geography (what could I do, it wasn't my favorite subject in school), so in two month I'll could say where the all regions of France are, one by one :-).

The course had started a week before, and I still didn't organize myself. I forgot my camera every day, and there were very nice dishes to show you, but I promise to show something on my next post. Besides it was very nice to come back to school, to see everyone (students and chefs) after a long vacation. I have to mention that the chefs relation to the students became more respectful, not as to dilettante. We still don't know where all the French regions, but we know something about cooking :-).

There is another interesting fact: as long as I study to cook, my relationship with the computer becomes to be less and less professional. I'm asking my husband "stupid" questions, that I didn't before. I have to say that it's great - to be dummy in computers :-).
Another good thing that happening it's that my parents came to visit us. We didn't see each other for 4 month, and I realized that I don't really want to live away from my family and friends. May be it's very short period and I can't do such a conclusions, as my husband says "We will talk about it next year!".

For now, here some pictures from London. I have an opportunity to travel a little bit, see nice places.