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another weekend
Mar. 6th, 2016 07:09 pmAs usual, I did a bit of cooking and baking. Yesterday I roasted some beets that had been lurking in my fridge and dressed them in a mustardy vinaigrette. I really ought to look into some other things to do with beets. Beets are delish but I'm a bit bored with this salad.
Also yesterday I made an approximation of a paella, with chicken, some Spanish chorizo, red and yellow peppers (capsicums), saffron, and a little smoked paprika. It was very tasty so I don't care how inauthentic it is. Next time I want to add some mussels or clams, though. Or shrimp, but I've been avoiding shrimp because it seems like it's all either environmentally disastrous, produced with slave labor, or both. (I'm sure there's acceptable shrimp on the market, but it's probably out of my price range. Mussels, on the other hand, are both cheap and sustainable, and I like them a lot.)
Today I discovered that I only had enough flour to bake muffins or soda bread (having forgotten to start proper bread yesterday), so naturally I chose muffins--cranberry pecan streusel muffins, to be exact. I used a recipe from the high-altitude baking book I have, but as has consistently been my experience with the book, the result was only okay. They didn't rise the way they were supposed to despite my following directions for my exact altitude, and the taste is a bit meh. The latter was probably not helped by my having to substitute lemon zest for the orange zest called for, and vanilla for the orange extract, but even so. Still, they're not bad and they used up the last of the whole cranberries that have been in my freezer since November.
I also ended up improvising a salad, loosely based on a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's Jerusalem. Their recipe is for deep-fried cauliflower florets with tahini-garlic dressing and pomegranate molasses. I roasted the cauliflower and an onion in a little olive oil, then when it had cooled I tossed some with romaine lettuce, some garlic croutons I made earlier, the tahini dressing, and some za'atar. Not bad at all, and I still have a lot of leftover cauliflower-and-onion mixture.
Otherwise I've done very little. On Friday I rented two movies with Mads Mikkelsen: King Arthur, which I am assured is the worst movie ever made but makes up for it by the chemistry between Mads and Hugh Dancy, and Valhalla Rising, which I gather from the blurb is mostly about Mads' character and others being tormented and horribly killed. So far I've yet to watch either, though I might try King Arthur tonight.
Also yesterday I made an approximation of a paella, with chicken, some Spanish chorizo, red and yellow peppers (capsicums), saffron, and a little smoked paprika. It was very tasty so I don't care how inauthentic it is. Next time I want to add some mussels or clams, though. Or shrimp, but I've been avoiding shrimp because it seems like it's all either environmentally disastrous, produced with slave labor, or both. (I'm sure there's acceptable shrimp on the market, but it's probably out of my price range. Mussels, on the other hand, are both cheap and sustainable, and I like them a lot.)
Today I discovered that I only had enough flour to bake muffins or soda bread (having forgotten to start proper bread yesterday), so naturally I chose muffins--cranberry pecan streusel muffins, to be exact. I used a recipe from the high-altitude baking book I have, but as has consistently been my experience with the book, the result was only okay. They didn't rise the way they were supposed to despite my following directions for my exact altitude, and the taste is a bit meh. The latter was probably not helped by my having to substitute lemon zest for the orange zest called for, and vanilla for the orange extract, but even so. Still, they're not bad and they used up the last of the whole cranberries that have been in my freezer since November.
I also ended up improvising a salad, loosely based on a recipe from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's Jerusalem. Their recipe is for deep-fried cauliflower florets with tahini-garlic dressing and pomegranate molasses. I roasted the cauliflower and an onion in a little olive oil, then when it had cooled I tossed some with romaine lettuce, some garlic croutons I made earlier, the tahini dressing, and some za'atar. Not bad at all, and I still have a lot of leftover cauliflower-and-onion mixture.
Otherwise I've done very little. On Friday I rented two movies with Mads Mikkelsen: King Arthur, which I am assured is the worst movie ever made but makes up for it by the chemistry between Mads and Hugh Dancy, and Valhalla Rising, which I gather from the blurb is mostly about Mads' character and others being tormented and horribly killed. So far I've yet to watch either, though I might try King Arthur tonight.
