After my relatively successful foray into the world of meatless meatballs I decided to try the same process with North African spices and herbs which takes it into the realm of kofta (kefte, kofte, keftides) rather than meatball. The last time the eggplant skin was sort of unsightly, I didn’t mind it but a number of nitpicking busybodies commented on the unsightliness of the skin in the finished “meatball.”
I solved this apparent gaffe by peeling the eggplant and processing the skin in a food processor so the skin was not obvious. I suppose that I could have just peeled the eggplant and fed the skins to my worms but I think the skin added some heft to the end product. Not that it matters all that much to me either but most of the nutritional benefits are in the skin. To be clear, the nutritional value doesn’t matter to me in the least.
Anyhoo, caraway, cardamom, cumin, by way of spices; parsley, dill, garlic and cilantro rounded out the herb profile. Meh. They looked nice and they didn’t make me want to gag but they lacked heft even with the peels and, to be honest, they also lacked the flavor punch of the North African spices, which is my fault. At least the nit-picking butt-in-skis aren’t gonna complain.
Costco used to sell key lime cookies that were really good but they haven’t carried them in ages so when I saw these key lime “tea” cookies at Trader Joe’s I thought I’d give ’em a whirl. Something to have at tea parties with the Mad Hatter over here, and easier than making a key lime pie. Maybe not as delicious but in a pinch they might be good and, as we know, good enough is good enough. The best I could say is that they were edible. WAY too sour, dry and I dunno, dusty. So I decided to make them into an “ice box cake.” These are non-baked things that are generally cookies buried in whipped cream and left overnight to absorb the cream. As a kid I used to beg my mother mercilessly to make the ice box cake that was shown on the side of those chocolate wafer cookies (which are no longer made unfortunately for me). Eventually after years of nagging she did and I LOOOOVED it. Of course, I’d have loved anything that was sweet enough to be considered dessert.
So I decided to make these into a key lime ice box cake. I’ll try anything apparently. But I did it so you don’t have to. I think that the wafer cookie works better than these dry hockey puck cookies. The whipped cream didn’t exactly saturate the cookies. So there were still dry lumps inside of the sorta mushy exterior. No one ate it. I tossed it. Lesson learned.
These were so completely easy. If only I could convince myself of that before hand it would save me a lot of finger-twisting and anxious swallowing. It looked easy but then, many things that end up being annoying, frustrating, completely insane often do. They may not really look so very pretty but they were delicious and easy, and vegetarian! The recipe says the prep time is 5 minutes. For him maybe, ten for me.
I don’t think I’ve ever made a recipe of this guy’s that wasn’t at the very least good, if not great. Recipe here The skin is not the prettiest but next time I make it I’m going to be sure to chop the peel pieces a little finer. For the record, most of the nutritious part of eggplant is in the peel or I’d peel them.
Read with caution, this may be disturbing to some people.
At about 11 am last Monday I laid down to take a nap. I’d had to get up at 4 to take Husoor to the airport so I was tired and I’m retired so don’t judge me. Well, you can judge me, I don’t care. Anyway, when I laid down I could hear what sounded like a wasp trapped in between the screen and the window. It was about 6 feet from my head. And there was no way in hell I was gonna be able to nap. I am not a great napper as it is and a trapped, angry wasp will keep me awake.
So I got up and carefully opened the blind in case it was inside. I’m not really afraid so much of wasps for the most part but I don’t want them inside. I’m more afraid of spiders since I’ve had some seriously alarming bites this summer, 7 to be exact. But I didn’t think it was in the house, there’s a screen, and it turned out not to be inside. But the buzzing had stopped so I thought it had escaped. I laid back down and was nearing the edge of sleep when it started again. So I opened the blind again and cranked the window out. No wasp.
This little song and dance went on a few more times so finally I took off the screen and stuck my head out. Sometimes I can be brave or maybe foolhardy.
And then I saw this. It appeared as if I had taken Daisy for her morning toilet outing and got lost on top of the window. But I knew what it was. A wasp nest. This wasp is a mud dauber in case you’re not up on your wasps.
I did not take this picture FYI
So I went and got a stick to poke it off the window. It was adhered surprisingly and annoyingly well. I mean, this thing had been zipping in and out for the last 25 minutes. I knew it was coming back soon. So I gave it a good whack and it FUCKING BROKE APART AND FLIPPED BACK ON ME!!!!!!! Showering me with SPIDERS!!!!!
As you might imagine I was extremely calm. In the sense that I shrieked (in a masculine way) and ran frantically towards the door out of the room. Then, realizing I had to put the screen back on before she (they are female) got back I stopped to consider my options. This was a conundrum. Screaming mad wasp, or 20 to 30 spiders. It’s actually amazing how fast the mind works. I realized that the spiders were not moving in that split second so I went and put the screen back on. I somehow managed to take a picture of the spiders on the window sill but not on the floor. I can be excused for this because I was hyperventilating, swatting at myself in case there were any stray wasps, spiders, ticks, or fleas on me, not to mention making strangled moaning sounds. Then I vacuumed the whole mess up and disposed of it all.
After some googlizing I have discovered that mud daubers feed spiders to their young by paralyzing them and putting them in their clay domiciles with the larva. These spiders were alive but paralyzed. Is that hellishly grizzly or what? But also mud daubers, for as evil as they look, are not aggressive. They can sting but do not. Unless you are a spider.
Possibly. I’d be giddy with delight but there are several variables at play here. Weather, water, soil, squirrels. I found these soon-to-be-ripe (I hope) tomatoes hiding behind leaves. Fearing squirrel theft I put some hardware cloth around them, not that this ever helped me in my quest to eat a peach.
I don’t really have many tomatoes as it is. I am not sure if it was the very cold June or the soil or my incompetence. I console myself with the fact that tomatoes will soon be available at the farmers market.
I hope the potatoes are doing something. It is more difficult to tell their situation by looking at them.
I mean, OK, rhubarb. It’s fine. We have a plant or two in the yard but really the word rhubarb induces yawns rather than salivation. It was good on ice cream when we were kids, not that we had ice cream very often, or rather, ice milk, which is what we had when we had “ice cream.” Ice milk and rhubarb sauce. Whatever.
So when Dr G brought a “rhubarb thing” (his words) that a colleague had made home for me, my first thought was “do I have to?” but I didn’t say that. I accepted the plate and was saying OK, fine as I shoved it into my yap. OMG, it was soooo good. I had to make it. Recipe here. I’ve already had requests for it.
Who decided to make egg whites into this? And why did I, when I know perfectly well from experience that it does not work, make them anyway.
OK, I had a shit-ton of egg whites left over from a massive key lime pie I’d made for a family get together and I had a half of a day to waste doing ridiculous things. So rather than my usual—put them in a jar and then put the jar into the refrigerator until such time as I decide to swish them down the garbage disposal—this time I came up with the brilliant idea to make Pavlovas for dessert with chocolate sauce, cherries and whipped cream. Sounded like a plan, a trepidatious one, but a plan. I whipped up the meringue just like the recipe says, I made circles on the baking paper just like the recipe says. I put them in the oven and reduced the temperature just like the recipe said to. And the recipe said “if the meringues start to turn brown . . . ”
If? If? How about “when”. They were in the oven for about 4 minutes when I realized they were already brown, I reduced the temp as I was told, baked them for the 3 hours or whatever.
In the meantime I made the cherry/chocolate sauce, all real nice like. I made the whipped cream and did all the various procedures required by the Pavlova recipe committee. I am very sorry I did not get a picture of the finished product. Not because they were pretty, but because they were not. Cow pies, or some other sort of unpleasantness, comes to mind.
I will admit that I made this dessert combination up. It seemed like a good idea and it would have been until you tried to cut through the “pavlova” which had a lot more in common with a sticky marshmallow than the crunchy confection my sister makes. It was a good idea gone south.
I’m not sure if a gauntlet has been thrown or I should give up and go home.
This recipe in the New York Times caught my eye. And I had visitors coming so I decided this would make the perfect breakfast food (unless you are from India in which case, it will not). In any event they were not Indians and I made it.
I’m not gonna lie, it was not easy to make. Anything that needs the sugar, extra fine at that, creamed with the butter in a stand mixer goes on my list of hard-to-alarming. Still I did it and it was good, really good even but worth hauling out the stand mixer, um, maybe not. Unless your guests are special. Mine were.
I don’t really get the drizzle part either. It felt professional, or maybe fussy fancy. I did it but really just because they told me to.
½ cup (1 stick) plus 3 tablespoons/150 grams unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing the pan
1 scant cup/190 grams granulated or superfine sugar (caster sugar)
1 teaspoon lemon zest, plus 1 tablespoon lemon juice (or more juice as needed)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
(vanilla essence)
3 large eggs, beaten
⅔ cup/90 grams all-purpose
flour (plain flour), sifted
1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
⅛ teaspoon salt
1 cup/110 grams almond flour (ground almonds)
1 ½ cups/200 grams fresh blueberries
⅔ cup/70 grams confectioners’ sugar (icing sugar)
Dash of vanilla
Step 1
Heat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit/190 degrees Celsius. Grease a 9- or 8-inch/21-centimeter loaf pan with butter, line it with a parchment paper sling and butter the paper. Set the pan aside.
Step 2
Place butter, sugar, lemon zest and vanilla extract in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat on high speed for 3 to 4 minutes, until light, then lower speed to medium. Add eggs in three additions, scraping down the sides of the bowl a few times as necessary. The mix may split a little but don’t worry: It’ll come back together once you add the dry ingredients.
Step 3
In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt and almond flour. With the stand mixer on low, add the dry ingredients in three additions, mixing just until no white specks remain. Fold in about ¾ of the blueberries by hand, then scoop batter into the prepared loaf pan.
Step 4
Bake for 15 minutes, then sprinkle the remaining blueberries over the top of the cake. Return to the oven for another 15 to 20 minutes, until cake is golden brown but still uncooked.
Cover loosely with foil and continue to cook for another 25 to 30 minutes (less for a 9-inch pan, more for an 8-inch pan), or until risen and cooked, and a knife inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean. Remove from oven and set aside in its pan to cool for 10 minutes before removing cake from pan and placing on a wire rack to cool completely.
Step 5
When cake is cool, make the icing: Add lemon juice, vanilla and icing sugar to a bowl and whisk together until smooth, adding a bit more juice if necessary, just until the icing moves when you tilt the bowl. Pour over the cake and gently spread out. The blueberries on the top of the cake may bleed into the icing a little, but this will add to the look. Let icing set (about 30 minutes), slice and serve.
You can have chole (choe-lay), and you can have chole badura but you cannot have badura alone or with anything else. It is the law.
Chole is a chickpea dish that I love and have made from time to time but badura is bread that is often eaten with it. With chole and only chole. When, once many years ago before i understood the rules, I suggested to kitchen policing entity that I’d like to try badura with something or other, let’s say, rajma, He looked at me like I’d just asked him to stuff the dog down the garbage disposal. OK, so now I know.
I’ve never attempted badura because it requires deep frying and I’m not as ease with this delicious method of cooking. But he is. And he made it last week.
OH MY GOD this was so delicious. Easily my favorite of his many various dishes. I wonder how it would be with rajma. Don’t mention this to him though.
