November 26, 2005
There are few photos on this blog
I have a camera. A dinky but decent Canon Powershot with inadequate memory, but it's a camera. But I am not really much of a photographer, and I have been completely disatisfied with my attempts at photographing food. Does anyone have suggestions for taking good photos of food?
That old-time apple cranberry pie
Another Thanksgivingish gathering. I was going to make a pumpkin tart, but when I was in the store I saw they had cranberries, and I remembered the apple cranberry pie, and thought it was time to do that again. So I made that, and it was well loved. There wasn't quite enough apple in it this time (I ran out, mostly due to inefficient coring technique—I need a proper apple corer) so it wasn't quite as glorious as last year's. But it was still really, really good. Everyone seemed to think it was going to be cherry or possibly rhubarb and was very surprised that it wasn't a sweet pie at all! Nita, who did most of the cooking for this party, pointed out how she grew up with tart pies, with the theory that the ice cream adds the sweetness. No one seemed to complain about the lack of ice cream, though.
November 24, 2005
Assorted rolls, for Thanksgiving
Three types of rolls for Thanksgiving. One was a dark Russian rye, the closest thing to pumpernickel that I could realistically make, since I can't seem to find pumpernickel flour in this town. It came out a little sweeter than I expected, but pretty nice. Another was potato buttermilk bread, which felt very experimental as I wound up doing all sorts of math on the recipe to substitute actual potato for potato flour, which meant I had to use powdered buttermilk, which is what I had anyways, so it worked out. And it tasted fine too. And the third was an Italian cheese roll, because the Thanksgiving host wanted something cheesy. I haven't tried that one yet.
It was a busy day of cooking!
I have another party to go to on Saturday, but happily I have plenty of rolls (somehow 8 people didn't go through all 33 rolls).
November 20, 2005
Pumpkin bread
I made pumpkin bread. The usual quick bread style. It came out more moist than I necessarily wanted it to be, perhaps, but it was edible. Instead of the usual pumpkin spices, I used garam masala, and that worked out OK. I probably could have thrown in more spice—but isn't that always the way!
November 02, 2005
Potato straw cake
Yesterday I made a pizza with potato for a topping (and cheese, and a garlic rosemary olive oil). I steamed the thinly sliced potato and added it on. But I probably should have soaked it a bit first -- it came out very gloppy. Oh well.
Tonight I made "potato straw cake", which was basically shredded potatoes dropped into a frying pan and turned into a vague huge latke. Pretty easy to make and fairly dull. It would have been better with some cheese in it. I wound up mixing some ketchup and vinegar and asafœtida for a topping, and that made it generally not unedible.