Luzula

- 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.

1) My DW circle is awesome and can solve all problems: I now have in my possession the scanned pdf:s of The Travels and Adventures of Mademoiselle de Richelieu. Will report back when I've read it. : D

2) A sum-up of fanworks that people recently made for me (or that are transformations of my work):
- petra wrote me a lovely P&P sonnet about Jane and Lizzie that I got in a letter, which is always a delight.
- blackglass recorded a podfic of my Watership Down fic The Story of Hrayatha and the Rabbit Who Left No Tracks. A good choice, since it includes oral storytelling, and I always enjoy hearing other people interpret my stories!
- Finally I got a private podfic in my email for my FotH fic In His Father's Footsteps from a fannish friend who is not in a position to have her voice on the internet. Which is a pity, because I loved it!

3) In non-fannish news, my supply of delicious rhubarb cordial that I made this summer is running out. : ( So I thought I'd try making rowanberry cordial--there's a large crop of them this year, and I found many recipes online. Alas, the result was not encouraging. I found it actively disgusting, with a lingering aftertaste that I couldn't get rid of even by brushing my teeth. They're so red and lovely on the tree! But obviously better left to the birds.

1) Guess who's got two thumbs and a first draft of her Yuletide story? ME. \o/ Ha, and I was worried about being able to write at all. I guess now I can work some more on my bonus Yuletide story.

2) We have a new flatmate! Or will have, anyway--one of my flatmates is moving out at New Year and we had to find someone new. It was pretty painless; we held a bunch of interviews and me and my remaining flatmate agreed at once about who we wanted to ask. She said yes, so that's settled. Also she has a cute dog.

3) Hmm, what else? Life is pretty much as usual. I have my standard bread baking in the oven; maybe I'll share the recipe:

Mix 2 deciliters of plain yoghurt with 12 deciliters of warm water, add salt and a little bit of yeast, and then 2 liters of coarsely ground rye flour. Put the bowl in a plastic bag and let it stand for 24-48 hours. This makes for a great fake sourdough! Then mix in fine wheat flour until the dough is firmer (but still almost loose enough to "flow" off the spoon). Butter and flour three rectangular bread pans and put the dough in. Let rise for an hour. Then bake in 200 degrees Celsius for 1 h 20 min. Remove from pans and wrap bread in towels immediately; let cool. Then put the bread in plastic bags and let it mature for a day before eating.