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st_aurafinaI try not to be superstitious (lies) and I try not to put anything on the behaviour of the moon (lies) but it's Friday the thirteenth and a full moon and things have been superweird. Just - weird requests at work, weird stuff happening. The whole town lost power. I had a doctor call me to check on a thing because he ~had a bad feeling, and he was totally right. (I know that doesn't mean a thing - subconscious works that way sometimes - but it was weird! Even he thought it was weird.)
At least it rained all day. Everything is nice and fresh again. And while we were out of power and I couldn't dispense (apart from emergency handwritten labels on bottles, so old school!) I got to do a little bit of crochet, which was very nice and soothing.
alexcat made a suggestion for posting topics here, which I think is a great idea. Reading Wednesday is definitely a thing, and I usually do Recipe Friday, but that does leave a few more days in the week that could be filled. And having a schedule would definitely help me be a bit more organised about posting more often.
Crafting or Creative Tuesday could definitely work for me.
Anyway. On with Recipe Friday. Which is a thing I do sometimes.
Something I cooked recently:
Gnocchi
Gnocchi day finally happened, yay!! I used this: How to make the perfect gnocchi, but next time I'm just going to to leave the egg out and go with potato and flour because I had no problems with them being tough or chewy. And the store-bought passata was fine once I'd simmered it with some herbs. (Yay for the first of the basil from the garden!) I very, very quickly bored of rolling them on a fork once my hands were all floury and potato-y so they don't have grooves, but I think I'll get one of those butter pat board thingoes and makelilacsigil roll them with her tiny, neat fingers.
[Gnocchi lined up on a kitchen cloth. They are rustic in shape.]
[Gnocchi in a glass dish with sauce and parmesan, ready to bake]
THEY WERE SO GOOD OMG. A+++ WOULD GORGE AGAIN.
Walnut Pesto
Walnut Pesto
I misread the instructions and blended the sun dried tomatoes into the paste, rather than adding them chopped afterwards, and I think the second way would have been nicer, but otherwise, this was good! For a first try at pesto, anyway, I was pleased. I'll have a better idea of how to tinker with the oil quantities for texture and so on the next time I try it.
Beetroot Brownies
Beetroot brownies (cw: has 'healthy eating' type talk)
I know, I swore I wasn't going to do anymore of those dodgy 'secret ingredient' recipes, but actually these came out pretty great. I only had crappy cooking chocolate to put in them, and I think they'd really benefit from a good 70% dark chocolate (and maybe more cocoa?), but all things considered, they're rich and tender and very tasty. Also, 250g of sugar made them tooth-naggingly sweet for me, so I'd cut that back, especially with the bitterness of a better chocolate in them. Ooh, and maybe some espresso powder.
[Four panels: beets from the garden, chopped beets ready to roast, a pinky/white batter, square chocolate brownies]
Hazelnut Thumbprint Cookies
I made them too small. I hate small cookies, they're so ungenerous and miserable! I think, if they'd been bigger, they'd have been perfect; the roasted hazelnut flavour was delicious. Also, see above recipe re not having good chocolate on hand: chocolate chips didn't really work in the thumbprints. They looked like little rabbit droppings. So I put nutella in the second round, but again, I need to keep good meltable chocolate on hand. Without eating it. (That's the trick, really.)
Cheese and Spinach Scones
Which were basically my regular Lemonade scones with sauteed spinach and a cup of grated tasty cheese thrown in. I left out the sugar and threw some black pepper and sea-salt. The sweetener in the diet Sprite I used wasn't a problem in terms of taste, which is why I use it. (For US people, lemonade over here is fizzy stuff like Sprite etc. Not... um, the cloudy yellow stuff with actual lemons in it.) They were pretty great, actually.
[Triangle shaped scones with spinachy stuff in them.]
Something I have concrete plans to cook soon:
Fromapplenym: Apple-Cardamom Brown-Butter Dutch Baby
I mean, who doesn't want to cook a Dutch Baby. *snorts*
Grandma Dorie's Italian Ricotta Cookies
I have a tub of ricotta that needs using up and these look promising.
Something I'm idly planning to cook in the future:
Edamame Ginger Dip
In my eternal search for sandwich glue/condiments that are fodmap-friendly.
Some kind of energy ball from the endless energy ball recipes I've bookmarked. I've just got to the end of the trail-mix balls I made back in November. They kept really well in the fridge!
Anyone cook anything interesting? Anyone have any culinary adventures/disasters?
At least it rained all day. Everything is nice and fresh again. And while we were out of power and I couldn't dispense (apart from emergency handwritten labels on bottles, so old school!) I got to do a little bit of crochet, which was very nice and soothing.
alexcat made a suggestion for posting topics here, which I think is a great idea. Reading Wednesday is definitely a thing, and I usually do Recipe Friday, but that does leave a few more days in the week that could be filled. And having a schedule would definitely help me be a bit more organised about posting more often. Crafting or Creative Tuesday could definitely work for me.
Anyway. On with Recipe Friday. Which is a thing I do sometimes.
Something I cooked recently:
Gnocchi
Gnocchi day finally happened, yay!! I used this: How to make the perfect gnocchi, but next time I'm just going to to leave the egg out and go with potato and flour because I had no problems with them being tough or chewy. And the store-bought passata was fine once I'd simmered it with some herbs. (Yay for the first of the basil from the garden!) I very, very quickly bored of rolling them on a fork once my hands were all floury and potato-y so they don't have grooves, but I think I'll get one of those butter pat board thingoes and make
lilacsigil roll them with her tiny, neat fingers. [Gnocchi lined up on a kitchen cloth. They are rustic in shape.]
[Gnocchi in a glass dish with sauce and parmesan, ready to bake]
THEY WERE SO GOOD OMG. A+++ WOULD GORGE AGAIN.
Walnut Pesto
Walnut Pesto
I misread the instructions and blended the sun dried tomatoes into the paste, rather than adding them chopped afterwards, and I think the second way would have been nicer, but otherwise, this was good! For a first try at pesto, anyway, I was pleased. I'll have a better idea of how to tinker with the oil quantities for texture and so on the next time I try it.
Beetroot Brownies
Beetroot brownies (cw: has 'healthy eating' type talk)
I know, I swore I wasn't going to do anymore of those dodgy 'secret ingredient' recipes, but actually these came out pretty great. I only had crappy cooking chocolate to put in them, and I think they'd really benefit from a good 70% dark chocolate (and maybe more cocoa?), but all things considered, they're rich and tender and very tasty. Also, 250g of sugar made them tooth-naggingly sweet for me, so I'd cut that back, especially with the bitterness of a better chocolate in them. Ooh, and maybe some espresso powder.
[Four panels: beets from the garden, chopped beets ready to roast, a pinky/white batter, square chocolate brownies]
Hazelnut Thumbprint Cookies
I made them too small. I hate small cookies, they're so ungenerous and miserable! I think, if they'd been bigger, they'd have been perfect; the roasted hazelnut flavour was delicious. Also, see above recipe re not having good chocolate on hand: chocolate chips didn't really work in the thumbprints. They looked like little rabbit droppings. So I put nutella in the second round, but again, I need to keep good meltable chocolate on hand. Without eating it. (That's the trick, really.)
Cheese and Spinach Scones
Which were basically my regular Lemonade scones with sauteed spinach and a cup of grated tasty cheese thrown in. I left out the sugar and threw some black pepper and sea-salt. The sweetener in the diet Sprite I used wasn't a problem in terms of taste, which is why I use it. (For US people, lemonade over here is fizzy stuff like Sprite etc. Not... um, the cloudy yellow stuff with actual lemons in it.) They were pretty great, actually.
[Triangle shaped scones with spinachy stuff in them.]
Something I have concrete plans to cook soon:
From
applenym: Apple-Cardamom Brown-Butter Dutch BabyI mean, who doesn't want to cook a Dutch Baby. *snorts*
Grandma Dorie's Italian Ricotta Cookies
I have a tub of ricotta that needs using up and these look promising.
Something I'm idly planning to cook in the future:
Edamame Ginger Dip
In my eternal search for sandwich glue/condiments that are fodmap-friendly.
Some kind of energy ball from the endless energy ball recipes I've bookmarked. I've just got to the end of the trail-mix balls I made back in November. They kept really well in the fridge!
Anyone cook anything interesting? Anyone have any culinary adventures/disasters?
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Date: 2017-01-13 08:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-13 10:30 am (UTC)WHAT'S THE Q WORD, OMG. How can I know if you can't mention it??
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Date: 2017-01-13 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-13 09:07 am (UTC)those scones look (and sound) nummy - I'm a huge fan of scones, and of spinach and cheese, so they'd be right up my alley. but I am quite curious - what do you call the cloudy yellow stuff with actual lemons in it if it isn't lemonade?
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Date: 2017-01-13 10:24 am (UTC)Lemon squash? Lemon cordial if you make it with concentrated lemon flavour? Ummm... it's not really a think we drink much, to be honest. I just know it's a thing you guys make.
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Date: 2017-01-13 10:04 am (UTC)ooh those brownies look yum!
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Date: 2017-01-13 10:26 am (UTC)They were weirdly and unexpectedly yum - on the first day, you could kind of taste the beetroot which wasn't unpleasant, just a bit odd, and from the second day, they were just rich and chocolatey.
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Date: 2017-01-13 10:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-14 07:49 am (UTC)Also there's so many in the garden right now. I may have over-planted.
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Date: 2017-01-14 12:55 pm (UTC)Also, I meant to say that I would be very pro Crafting Tuesday - partially for accountability reasons and partly because I have knitting bee on a Tuesday so I'd definitely have progress to report that day!
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Date: 2017-01-13 10:52 am (UTC)Here Friday 13th has just started. I'm feeling a bit sick, so I won't be taking any chances today...
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Date: 2017-01-14 07:50 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2017-01-13 12:40 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2017-01-13 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-14 07:52 am (UTC)Yeah, I'm trying to figure out what we have that fits the US lemonade niche, and honestly, I don't think we have anything. We're not even that into iced tea. I guess the stock answer has to be beer!
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Date: 2017-01-13 01:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-14 08:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-13 01:44 pm (UTC)I'm hoping to convince my brain that I can start cooking again once I've got this sleep debt under control. It's going to be a whole new exciting cooking world for me though, since
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Date: 2017-01-14 08:13 am (UTC)Sleep debt is a bad debt. I hope you're feeling better soon.
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Date: 2017-01-14 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-13 06:45 pm (UTC)this is so interesting. I very rarely cook because I hate my parents' kitchen (they smoke there, it's very old, it grosses me out basically) and because it's cold and I have Raynauds but I've become a bit of a foodie since I started getting press meals a couple of years ago. Unfortunately this has not fixed my weird dislikes and my texture issues, but it's helped me find a lot of things I do like — e.g., I can't eat risotto or gnocchi for the texture, but it turns out I love sushi and a lot of pasta sauces that have no tomato in it. (I realized I liked pasta when I decided to make it with just oil and herbs. But I like green pesto too, and lemon.)
Brownies I do have some experience with. I often cut back on sugar and I rarely do espresso because as much as I love coffee I can't stand it in baked goods.
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Date: 2017-01-14 10:13 am (UTC)I realized I liked pasta when I decided to make it with just oil and herbs.
Oh, man, my nonna used to just give us pasta with a little bit of oil and some parmesan and it was heaven. So good. Pesto makes a great sauce, too.
Texture wise, the gnocchi was actually quite different to the bought stuff, I was surprised at how light and fluffy it came out.
I can't taste the coffee flavour of the espresso powder myself, but I do get the bitterness, which I'm finding is a taste I like more and more - maybe something changed on my palette, because for some reason, 2016 was the year I discovered I love grapefruit, too.
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Date: 2017-01-13 08:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-14 10:14 am (UTC)Mmm, I love Ferrero Rocher! So good!
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Date: 2017-01-13 09:07 pm (UTC)Also mmmmmm gnocchi and I am definitely trying lemonade scones (and also those zucchini muffins you linked me to the recipe for last time I commented here) if it ever cools down enough that I can bear to have the oven on. :(
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Date: 2017-01-19 01:40 am (UTC)Hope you've had some cool days in the interim!
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Date: 2017-01-14 02:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-19 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-28 11:57 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2017-01-19 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-14 06:20 am (UTC)I KNOW, NOT MY USUAL KIND OF FOOD. But I thought I should get used to cooking on a budget again...
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Date: 2017-01-19 01:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-14 04:29 pm (UTC)Fortunately I had leftovers in the fridge to eat instead. And the next day I made carne adovada for the first time and it was marvelous. I've been eating it taco-style in homemade corn tortillas with lettuce and radishes for freshness and crunch, and oh, it is SO GOOD.
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Date: 2017-01-19 03:04 am (UTC)Oh, sad! But then, good that you decided that you didn't want to eat it - I have a tendency to keep chowing down like a martyr, and that just makes for more misery in the end.
Oh, oh, that pulled pork. Oh, man.
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Date: 2017-01-29 12:02 am (UTC)What are the chiles that you want and can't get? I'm happy to send a care package. :D
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Date: 2017-01-29 12:39 am (UTC)It's very kind of you to offer a care package - I would totally take you up on it because I'd love to try them but Australia has some intense customs import laws about bringing plant matter into the country, and I'd be surprised if they'd make it through.
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Date: 2017-03-13 03:23 am (UTC)I hadn't thought about customs laws re: importing plant matter! If canned stuff is okay, I would be happy to send some canned chipotles. (Chipotles are smoked jalapeños, fairly spicy and very flavorful; just one or two will flavor a big pot of meat or beans. They are available dried or, when canned, packed in adobo, a tomato-vinegar-garlic sauce.)
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Date: 2017-01-14 06:27 pm (UTC)The rain was very nice.
Culinary adventures: less adventure, more lazy-recipe:
- slice two or three medium potatoes and boil until soft, then drain. Finely chop a small onion, dice a rasher of middle bacon, and saute both in 1tbsp of olive oil until done, then add the potatoes and a little cracked black pepper and whatever other seasonings don't sound too outlandish. Continue frying until ravenous. Makes a lot of lunch.
My other cooking adventures this week have been more like "peanut butter stirred through rice". It's nutrition, more or less. And requires hardly any brain.
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Date: 2017-01-19 03:08 am (UTC)Peanut butter stirred through rice is a perfectly cromulent meal, with protein in it even. Go you.
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Date: 2017-01-18 05:52 pm (UTC)I haven't tried my hand at gnocchi yet. I tend to just buy the store bought and make sauce. Mom made some out of ricotta the other day though and they were tasty.
Definitely going to have to try the scones. Those sound & look amazing.
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Date: 2017-01-19 03:11 am (UTC)I want to be all rational and scientific about it, but naaaaaah, it's totally true.
The gnocchi was surprisingly easy, though I wouldn't make so many next time. But they did freeze and cook well, so it wasn't a problem.
The scones were awesome! I totally recommend them.