It's starting to get colder here, so it's time to make soup! I made the sotanghon, chicken and mushroom soup from Pinoy Cook tonight and it was wonderful; really easy and really filling. (The wonderful-ness of it all was helped along by the Global santoku knife we bought yesterday...)
I was way too hungry after making it, so no photo this post... maybe I'll post one tomorrow if the leftovers look presentable.
One of my favourite things about cooking is that with practice, it gets easier and easier to smoosh multiple recipes together, substitute ingredients at will and still end up with something super tasty.
We picked up some frozen handmade wagyu beef ravioli from a local farmer's market on Saturday so I made a sauce based on this recipe. I had to substitute based on what was in the fridge - vine ripened tomatoes took the place of the roma tomatoes in the sauce, and baby roma tomatoes were used as garnish instead of cherry tomatoes - but the results were fantastic.
In kind of unrelated news...
I appear to be allergic to crustaceans. I am not very happy about this and have requested a challenge test to find out just how allergic I am. This means no prawns, crab or lobster until the test though, which could be anything up to three months away (sob).
And for Easter, I ended up making Gourmet Traveller's tiny chocolate fudge cakes. I have no photos because they ended up disappearing in all of five minutes!
I'd never bothered to segment an orange properly for a recipe before this one, but it made all the difference! I used this illustrated tutorial to figure out what to do, and owning a small sharp knife and half-decent knife skills took care of the rest.
The resulting pudding was not exactly what you'd call healthy, but damn it tasted and smelled good!
Next weekend is Easter so I'm trying to figure out what to make... I know it has to feed a bunch of people and it has to involve chocolate.
Risotto isn't hard to make, per se; you do need to measure your ingredients and stir it constantly for half an hour if you want it to turn out just right. Less intensive ways to do it are by baking (this recipe is NICE. Rich, but nice) and with a rice cooker (which I plan to try as soon as my boss gives back my awesome new cookbook).
This is probably the fifth or sixth time I've tried making risotto and this try was perfect! The creme fraiche works beautifully with this particular recipe, too.
My husband and I were incredulous that the recipes in Cooking Guide could taste good when made as is, so we've decided to try out recipes and review them with photos until we get sick of the whole exercise.
We tried the saltimbocca first, and while it doesn't look so crash hot it tasted great! Substituting ground sage for the fresh sage leaf and speck for the prosciutto didn't mess with the recipe much at all.
Our lack of a meat tenderiser combined with a lack of respect for the recipe's insistence on the meat tenderiser is where things fell down a bit - getting the speck and the veal to stick together needed a bit more of a beating. Didn't affect the taste though! ;)
I was checking out a Rihanna video today and glanced down at the comments (I should know better by now, but it's the whole "Fascination with the Abomination" thing) and saw this little gem:
Isn't she as much white as she is black? Turns out, she's from Barbados and of Guyanese descent. I realise that I'm treading touchy ground here, but as a person of "mixed descent" myself, I guess I'm more sensitive to these things. Maybe overly so. BUT. I think I have a point here and it's that she's no more black than white, but because she's apparently a little bit black, she's not white anymore? Maybe it's just a "white country" thing and in Africa, she's regarded as white. In Barbados, she's probably just Barbadian (or Bajan). In China, would they regard her as black? Possibly. If I go to China, I wonder if the natives would regard me as white or chinese...
This is stupid. I'm not sure what my point is anymore.
*sigh*
/rant
If you could do anything you want tomorrow, what would it be?
Submitted by Becca-Pink.
I would have a day of pure indulgence. Wake up without the alarm and bask in the sunlight in my bed for a while. Maybe finish the book waiting on the bedside table. Then a hot shower and jump in my jeans and an old t-shirt, put on my coat (it's a sunny day, but still chilly in the morning) and walk to the café down the street with Mike. French toast, a glass of orange juice, some Earl Grey tea. Sunglasses and grins. Idly decide what to do with the afternoon. It doesn't matter what, just whatever we feel like. Maybe a movie. Maybe go to the river with the dogs. Having the luxury of choice is what matters here. And so the day ambles on, relaxed. Happy.
Well, my copies of Japanese Nostalgic Car have yet to arrive, but a friend not far from me received his copy yesterday, so he lent it to me to facilitate some drooling. I promised not to get it on his copy.
Man, what to say. So damn stoked. I was hoping the cover would be of a heavier stock, but otherwise I'm rapt. There are mistakes here and there throughout the mag, and one pretty big kerning cockup on the cover, but I've taken all of those things on board and I know they won't happen again. All in all, I think it's not bad for a first ever effort.
Here's some choice photos.
15,000 copies. Glossy pages throughout. 83 pages. All designed by me. Bring on issue 2!
