I 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.
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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.
( Two in-process photos under the cut )
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.
( My ~insta layout process photo under the cut )
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.
( They came out pretty! )
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. ( Two in-process photos under the cut )
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.
( My ~insta layout process photo under the cut )
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.
( They came out pretty! )
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?