Artisan

Gingerbread cake

I made this gingerbread cake, and it was rather good and I'm still working my way through it. I can't believe how much honey and molasses went into it, though.

I have been asked to make molasses spice cookies for a friend. Now, having made this cake, I must purchase more molasses in order to do this. Which is fine, of course.

Sauerkraut

I started a new batch of sauerkraut today, I don't mind telling you!

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.

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).

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!

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.

Cooking through the vegetables

Getting ready for a week away from home (train down to LA for an Oulipo conference) and cooking up all the vegetables I ambitiously bought. Otherwise, you know, they will go bad.

The spinach was wilted and fried with a little garlic (and then asafœtida, of course). The eggplant was sliced and broiled, which didn't work out so well, as broiling never seems to work out so well for me. And the cauliflower was fried up a bit and then braised in tomato sauce with a little garlic. That was pretty nice!

The next few days will be on a train and will consist mostly of carbohydrates, I suspect, so this will have to satisfy my body for a bit.

See you in November.

Tahini as an ice cream topping

David recommended it, and although I originally had some suspicion about it, he was right, so very right.

Asafœtida

This is the first time in several months where I didn't wake up to comment spam. So instead, the few minutes a day I'm willing to devote to this blog will be put towards making an entry. Yay!

Lately I've been putting asafœtida in anything I can think of. More specifically, I have decided it's great on popcorn, and also fantastic as part of a simple "I'm hungry so I'm not going to spend much time on this" tomato pasta sauce. (Diced tomatoes, olive oil, salt, pepper, and all the asafœtida you desire.)

I wonder if it would go well in bread. Some sort of thin bread, like naan, perhaps.

But I love you, actual comments from actual people

All right, per Jaq's suggestion, I have switched comments over to HaloScan. That means all the old comments are gone, but such is life. They're not "really" gone, I have secret access to them from my control pod, so I can ruminate over the good old days. Please, give the new comments system a test run! I have!

I do wish it had TypeKey verification, that shit is fun. "xxyrshr"!

Actual posts about food to come soon.

I hate you, spam.

It's not that I haven't been cooking: I have, lots of Indian food mostly. But I am so annoyed by the constant spam that I have grown angry at Movable Type. If anyone has a suggestion that doesn't involve upgrading to 3.x then let me know (artisan at flim dot com) -- the blacklist is still letting through several a day, no matter how broad I try to make the list. And it is tedious, considering how little traffic I get.

Creamy potato soup

I added some peppers, and I was shocked, shocked, when it caused the purée to become a bit pinkish.

Lekach

For Rosh Hoshanna I made this Ashkenazic honey cake. Except I ran out of honey and had to use corn syrup for half. The cake turned out just OK, and surprisingly enough not as sweet as I thought it would be, considering all the honey and brown sugar and corn syrup in it. Perhaps my new year will not be that sweet after all. Well, I don't have that much of a sweet tooth, so the cake at least is probably better for it.

Red bell peppers with roasted chickpea flour

The peppers, sauteed for about 8 minutes, ended up at just the right softness, maintaining some bite while loosing their peppery aggressiveness. The roasted chickpea flour attempted to give them some sort of coating, tried to cling on to the peppers for dear life, but something seemed a bit off with the coagulation. It all ended up wetter than it probably should have been. The recipe called for 3 peppers and it was made with only two, which might have been the issue. Anyway an interesting food, but I'm not sure I'm going to make it again.