Luzula

I roasted the following in the oven with olive oil and salt: parsnips, parsley root, potatoes, carrots, yellow beets, acorn squash. To go with that, I took the baby summer squash and baby butternuts and put them in an oven pan, covered with a mix of bread crumbs, butter, basil, hazelnuts run in a blender, and grated parmesan cheese (I almost, but not quite, reinvented pesto there...). On the side, there was baba ganoush, and also fresh shelled beans in butter, chopped parsley, salt, and juice from flowering quince (which I use as a lemon replacement). Can recommend!

There were four vegetables from the garden in this meal that we tasted for the first time:
- Parsnips (I generally like parsnips, but hmm, ours were not top notch somehow. They were also a bit small and skinny, so perhaps a little more manure for them next year.)
- Parsley root (I had never had this before--it does taste of parsley, but also a bit earthy and mealy. I wasn't a huge fan, and as it also didn't sprout well, we might not grow this again.)
- Acorn squash (Yes! I loved the rich and nutty taste, and this was one I picked because I thought it didn't look quite mature, and it was still delicious. Will grow again, and more of it.)
- Greek Gigantes runner beans (Yum! Huge white beans, creamy and buttery and tasty. I thought at first that they hadn't been that productive, which is true in terms of number of beans, but they're so huge that if you go by weight they were still cropping well.)

I would like to make this cake recipe. What does it mean when it says "1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour, divided" in the ingredient list? First I read it as "one to one half a cup", but that doesn't make sense. Is this in fact an American way of writing "one and a half"? And why does it say "divided"? Also it's a mystery to me why it says in the instructions that you should use "1-1/4 cups flour" instead of "1-1/2 cups flour". I can't see anywhere else in the recipe that uses flour. It does say "test kitchen approved", so I assume it's tested and proofread...

- I made palak paneer, with homemade paneer. Which was quite simple to make, and turned out well! I used yoghurt as the curdling agent. I also made chutney a while ago from the apples before they ran out, which went well with the meal.
- I bought an ice-cream machine and made gelato. I had not realized before that gelato is basically frozen custard? Like, you make it the same way you make custard sauce, heating up milk and cream with egg yolks until it grows thick. My first try was to flavor it with red currants, but they're quite tart, and I think I used too much berries. Next try will be something chocolatey.
- My kimchi experiment turned out all right, or at least the fermentation bacteria did their thing and I liked the taste. I am somewhat hampered by one of my housemates being allergic to red chile fruits (and indeed raw tomatoes, strawberries, etc, so I guess it's some coloring molecule?), but she can eat yellow and green chile, so we manage.
- I tried putting some licorice powder into my homemade ginger beer, which was interesting, and I think I'll do it again. But not all the time.
- I saved some acorns this fall, and ground them up and soaked out the tannins, but have not yet made something from them. It is not my impression that they have much of a taste of their own once the tannins are gone, but maybe they're a good base for other flavors?
- I made sticky toffee pudding, which I have been low-key wanting to do since having it in Britain. It turned out well, but as the name implies, it's a rich indulgence and not something to make often!
- A while ago I made a post asking for recipes trying to replicate something I had at a Chinese restaurant. I don't know that I exactly managed that, but I went to an East Asian food store and bought the numerous ingredients from this recipe that I didn't have at home, and tried it. Delicious! And it felt like a whole palate of tastes that I have not tried cooking with before.

Yep, I suppose cooking is sort of a new fandom for me! : D

From The Compleat Housewife (1773):

How to Make Cock Ale: Take ten gallons of ale and a large cock, the older the better; parboil the cock, flay him and stamp him in a stone mortar till his bones are broken (you must craw and gut him when you flay him), then put the cock into two quarts of sack, and put to it three pounds of raisins of the sun stoned, some blades of mace, and a few cloves; put all these into a canvas bag, and a little before you find that the ale has done working, put the ale and bag together in a vessel; in a week or nine days' time bottle it up; fill the bottle but just above the neck, and give it the same time to ripen as other ale.

(I found this utterly bizarre when first reading it, but the more I think of it, the more it sounds kind of like a liquid meal, since ale has lots of calories in it. Chicken soup crossed with ale, or something.)

(US friends, my thoughts are with you.)

So my two housemates and I are now taking turns cooking dinner, which I appreciate enormously. I love cooking for other people, and it's also great to just sit down to table to a meal someone else cooked, which is often something you might not have cooked yourself! I also love just leaving all the clean-up to someone else after cooking dinner. One of my housemates is an excellent cook. It was almost comical when we moved in and we were both, "so here are all my jams and preserves and all my saved-up empty jars and bottles! : D" Luckily we have a large pantry in the cellar. I never really liked kombucha before, but his is delicious, and now I am starting a second batch cloned off from his, because his weekly batch always runs out too soon. My other housemate is not that good a cook, but oh well. You can't have everything, and she's a good housemate in other ways.

However, I can confidently say that I am also an excellent cook! I made a venison stew the other day which turned out delicious, and I thought I'd share the recipe.

venison chopped into pieces (can be one of the tougher parts)
red wine
tomato paste
a bunch of small whole peeled onions (they'll end up mush in the sauce anyway)
a couple of whole peeled garlic bulbs (ditto)
a couple of anchovies (ditto)
rosemary
bay leaves
black pepper
some tabasco or similar
salt
a dash of cocoa powder (not the kind with sugar and milk in it, just the chocolate)
heavy cream

Fry the pieces of venison in butter on high temperature, then add the other stuff and let it simmer on low temperature for about three hours. Add water as needed if too much of it evaporates. (I am not confident that "anchovy" is the word I want. We call them "sardell". But it's the tiny fish which is salted and then preserved in oil; my main use of it is to flavor sauces.) To go with the stew, I grilled slices of the following root vegetables in the oven: potato, carrot, parsnip, beet, and Jerusalem artichoke.

I posted the recipe for nettle soup in a comment; re-posting it here in case more people want to try it! To be clear, this is for Urtica dioica (the common nettle of Eurasia, which has apparently also spread to other continents) and I cannot speak for the edibility/taste of other nettle species.

Pick the nettles during the spring, by wearing gloves and using a scissors. Just take the top, so you don't have to weed out the stringy stems later. Wash them in water, then boil them in water for perhaps five minutes. If you have more nettles than fits in your pot, boil them in several batches, in the same water. Keep the water that you boiled in for later. Chop the nettles which are now soft and don't sting. Make a soup with vegetable stock and the water that you boiled the nettles in, and add chopped nettles, some chopped fried onions, some cream, a little thickening (flour), some black pepper and salt to taste. Eat with a boiled egg if you like.

Various people shared chocolate chip cookie recipes with me, and I finally ended up making these, though with slightly less chocolate. What I wanted was a cookie that was crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle, and with a strong butterscotch flavor. I am completely and utterly satisfied. *happy sigh*

My second long Flight of the Heron story is over 28,000 words now, and is going very well! Writing is often the most satisfying thing that happens in my day, these days. I predict that it will keep going well until approximately 35,000 words, when I will hit an upcoming plot difficulty that I don't yet know how to solve--I know what I want to accomplish, but not how to accomplish it. Oh well, I'll just keep going until I hit it.

Also, since I last posted recs, five more Flight of the Heron stories have been posted, with one author posting for the first time. Go check them out!

We had book club meeting today, and discussed Thornfruit by Felicia Davin. It was a perfectly fine fantasy book? I enjoyed it well enough, but had no strong feelings about it.

I just made a soup that turned out really good, and I thought I'd share the recipe (also then I can hopefully remember it myself). Despite the fact that I occasionally eat meat, I think I'm a pretty good vegan cook. This is because I often live with vegetarians and vegans, and communal cooking has to be adapted to the people with the most restrictive diets.

( Thai-inspired carrot soup )