Comments

OK, I have added some comment spam filters, so comments are turned back on for now. Hopefully this will work!

Cabbage with thyme

Some cabbage cooked in butter with thyme. Simple and tasty.

Sauerkraut

Also I started a batch of sauerkraut. It should be ready in Febraury.

Oven fries

Yesterday was busy. Well, I thought the cranberry ketchup was going to be ketchup, so I thought, well, let's come up with something that will go well with it. So I made oven fries, using the Cook's Illustrated recipe, which involves steaming them for 5 minutes before baking them.

Wow, did that trick work! Most oven fries are kinda raw inside, but these were cooked and pleasant all the way through.

It was difficult to get the "ketchup" onto the fries (since it was somewhat more like jelly than ketchup) but they did taste nice together.

Cranberry ketchup

From another Christmas gift, The Joy of Pickling, came this curiously titled recipe. Cranberry ketchup sounded like a great idea, and this did turn out good, but it's more of a relish than what you'd think of as ketchup. The sort of thing you would put on turkey, maybe, although it could go with a lot of things.

Sun-dried tomato and thyme hearth loaf

Billis wanted to make bread, and so we made bread together, although hundreds of miles apart. He had some sun-dried tomatoes he wanted to use up, so I picked this recipe from Bread Alone. (Yes, it's a book from 1993!)

Well, the bread came out very sun-dried tomato-y (and pinkish) and I must admit, sun-dried tomatoes are not my favorite, but it was stil pretty good. Joanie especially seemed to like it.

Rhubarb pie

I admit, I slacked off a bit by using frozen rhubarb, and it showed. I also probably needed to add more cornstarch, because of the frozen nature of the fruit. But: The crust came out pretty nice and flaky. The lattice top was handsome enough for my first try. So it's a good start.

Semolina sesame rolls

This is from the new book, Bread Alone. I'm not sure how I feel about the book itself yet. It really wants to be The Village Baker. The author has prejudices (about types of yeast, say) which contradict what other books have tested out (that instant yeast actually rises bread faster than active dry yeast, say). But!

But these rolls are little explosions of yumminess. Especially when eaten warm from the oven. So you have to give it credit for that, at least!

UPDATE: Upon further investigation, this book came out the same year as The Village Baker! (1993.) Interesting.

Baguettes

It has been a while.

I made some baguettes today, and they came out OK but not brilliant. I think they were probably rushed, or they were too warm when they were rising. I should perhaps invest in a few new thermometers.

I received some books for Christmas: One about bread, one about pastries, and one about pickles. More on them later.

What I made for friendsgiving

We had some people over for a "friendsgiving" party on Saturday. This is what I made:

Rye bread, which came out very nice.
Baguettes, but I forgot the salt and they had no flavor. They looked very nice, however.
Brussels sprouts, curried with currants, which were delicious.
Cauliflower with browned butter, sage, and walnuts, which were also nice.
Pumpkin-ginger-molasses tart, which was about the same as last time.
Curried yoghurt dip, which people found very strong.
Pizza, margareta, the usual.

Jake made his beet salad with cardamom in it, and it was better than last time; other people brought other foods, and they were all very yummy.

Comment spam

This has been overwhelmed with comment spam. Until I figure out how to stop it, I'm going to (try to) disallow comments. Even though I love your comments. So perhaps you could e-mail me them? artisan chez flim dot etc.

Mashed potatoes

This was the Cooks Illustrated recipe, which turned out really creamy. Weirdly creamy. Admittedly, I added more cream than the recipe suggested (but I was mashing the potatoes, and they recommended ricing them).