Vegetarian appies at Green Cabo...and eco/green festival in Cabo San Lucas

That was a quite interesting setting for an  organic and green living festival:  an unfinished parking garage in a convention center inside a quite polluted (and polluting...) marina, next to a dolphin "concentration camp". 
But, hey! who am I to judge? Better stop before I bruise some overinflated ego.
Happily decided to be present with a little stand ...the only caveat was : only vegetarian food. Quite a surprise and a challenge for yours truly who "likes his vegetables with the peel on and his animals whole" LOL.

This is what we agreed on : 

* Roasted garlic, toasted almonds,honey,cranberries, chickpeas pate'/marinated cherry tomato/ multi grain sourdough

*Seared farmers' queso fresco/mango chutney/baked plantain

*Smokey eggplant caviar/dill + garlic yogurt/capsicum + fennel coulis/sprouted seeds + coconut+corn blini 

 presented as a trio of amuse gueules an a cute leaf shape white plate.

Here's a few pics that my new friend Alejandra, a very talented Argentinian artist from La Paz   (http://www.alejandramorante.com ), took for me, since there were no pics whatsoever taken by the event staff and/or organizers.

Overall, despite the poor organization, planning and advertising of the event , it did not go bad...not stellar, but not bad either.

I met some interesting people, 
some definitively peculiar persons and made a few new friends.

Since the whole vegetarian theme was quite of an unsuspected challenge I did not follow any recipe and went instead by pure inspiration, instinct and taste and I haven't organized my cooking and tasting notes yet.

I will post recipes of the dishes as soon as possible.

For now, 

Ciao from Los Cabos,

Emilio  : )

Porchetta! [porˈketta]

What represents a summer county party better than a shiny, juicy and fragrant porchetta being sliced hot from the oven or spit in a small Italian village square?

How can you resist that smile....

Here's Wikipedia's description :

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porchetta

and here's mine:

First, you need the perfect pig.... I personally like 30 to 40 pounds animal, because it's a lot of work to completely de bone it, as you can see in the
videos that follow.




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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151027331316123


Then you need to get ALL the scrap meat, the legs meat, the liver, handfuls of garlic, fennel seeds, salt and pepper and BUSHES, forests of rosemary and stuff the baby, tie it up and rub it with more herbs and olive oil...with care and tender love.
All this hard work will pay you back four hours later, when straight out of the oven you'll have earned the rights to the little caramelized nuggets of meat sticking out of the roast... heaven!




No need to get fancy here, that would be against the peasant nature of this venerable preparation...some good crusty bread or piadina ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piadina ) and some rustic red wine..easy, that's all you need for a great time with your friends and family and the rest of town on a summer Sunday....


A little side note:  this is a great opportunity to take a look at how organs, like lungs, work....

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151027373471123

Have fun!
Emilio

So, what happened? Where did Emilio go? Is he still alive and well in the Baja desert?
The answer is YES, still here, still longing my green woods and the Pacific rain forest.  : )
Of all the summers and the low seasons, this past one has been the slowest.
Basically business has been flat lining for the past few months and gave me a great opportunity to work on new projects, ideas, recipes for the oncoming season and...lots of fishing and archery training.
I also discovered and picked up a new obsession, the atlatl.
I will start posting regularly again next week and I'll try and get some half decent pics of my archery and atlatl passion.
For the moment it's everything kids!
Ciao,
Emilio