m. 34 potato and rutabaga (swede) puree

every once and awhile we create a meal around a "side," in this case it was potato and swede puree, but not just any potato and swede puree, both the potato and the rutabaga were from our garden and the recipe for the puree came from our very own copy of the larousse gastronomique (p. 949, for your reference), the larousse's recipe was actually for potato and turnip, but in the end it looked like this:

those are homemade spelt bread croutons inelegantly perched on top of the puree (and some kale from our garden in the back!), it fell into the "ridiculously good" category and given the fact that we have a whole field of swede grounding in our winter garden right now, i'm sure we will be eating this again very soon!

intermezzo 3 the value of protein

remember my little rant about processed protein? well one of the things that i argued was that little, tiny bits of protein that come in cardboard boxes (and if your lucky plastic to prevent freezer burn, somehow the presumption is that if its not real meat it is not affected by real freezer burn) are ridiculously expensive ... well in defense of that argument i present exhibit "A:"

now, i appreciate the exceptional quality of food at ASDA (or walmart for those of you admiring this sale from afar) but i must object that i just don't think that quorn fingers are worth £1247.25 per kilo, in fact, it would be a stretch to suggest that they are worth 3 for 5, particularly when you can get them sometimes at iceland foods for just a £1 a box, and of course even at that price, the veggie "fingers" that come out of my kitchen, made from wheat gluten power, or beans, or tofu are still cheaper, fresher, and tastier than anything the fungal engineers in quorn's labs can muster, good try ASDA!

m.33 mee goreng

long ago i was convinced that no fried noodle dish would ever come out of our kitchen, i held firm to this doxa for two reasons: 1) we cook on an electric stove, and hence we would never really get the heat needed to fry noodles properly and 2) the memories of failed phat thai from a box were seared into my culinary memory, and my hands got clammy anytime i would even pick up a spatula with the intent of stirring noodles in a pan ... luckily all of that is behind us, and we have been making perfectly simple and tasty fried noodles now for about a year, our latest attempt looked like this:

 although normally we wing it, this time we tried a recipe from ottolenghi's plenty to see how he did it, we substituted harissa for sambal olek, thus putting in jeopardy any future trip to the malay world ...

m. 32 saag tofu and chickpeas in a tangy tomato sauce

we had an extravagant night of homemade "curry" as part of the "midwife's orders," m actually made both dishes, very yummy indeed, the saag tofu, which was actually chard from the garden rather than spinach, came from deborah madison's suppers book, while we went back to our standard for the chickpea recipe, the art of indian vegetarian cooking, always yummy:

m. 31 little baby lasagne

what do you do when there is a little one on the way and you want to freeze some food so that you don't have to cook after its arrival?  you make little baby portions of lasagne:

it is a red sauce lasagne, with ricotta and spinach (which we discovered is, after reading the guardian and following their hilarious typology, an "american" style lasagne), we made the pasta the day before and cut up tiny little layer pieces, now they are sitting in our freezer just waiting to be eaten, gulp!

m. 30 traditional british "tangy" lemon cake

or at least that what our "traditional british cooking" cookbook called it:

the top came out with a huge seam showing because the cake rose too quickly, nonetheless, very yummy and tangy, we will definitely try to be more "traditional" in our kitchen in the future!

m. 29 veggie italian sausage on apple sage "heros" with apple chutney

here is our first trifecta and it is a doozy:

we begin with veggie italian sausages from everydaydish tv, this is a very yummy recipe (much better than the tofurkey recipe, which itself is not at all bad), then we move to the bread, which is again a dan lepard creation, apple sage heros, we finally got to use our baguette tray to bake the hero rolls, but we also did two "loaves" conventionally:

they were very very good, and not as dense as his bread usually is! the condiment of choice (unfortunately not pictured above) was m's very own apple chutney, a 2010 vintage, just opened for the occasion ... in all a great lunch!

m. 28 a broccoli cheese tart

one of the advantages of maternity leave has been cooking lunch together, today m adapted a broccoli cheese tart recipe from one of our cheesier cookbooks and the result was amazing:

she did the short crust pastry (which we are a little bit obsessed by this week, that and polenta it seems, a random combination of interests) and i did the veggies, we even had enough pastry dough to make some smaller tarts for the days after the little one arrives and we feel less adventurous (on that note i will be making some lasagna this weekend, yum!):

intermezzo 2 another suma order

i give you ... another glorious suma order:

in all its pragmatism and hilarity! we have two trays of tomatoes this time, a "pillow of penne" as m referred to it, that is a massive 5 kg of polenta off to the left, a whole cow of uht milk, both pasta flour and all purpose flour in the middle and some other things too embarassing to admit to (note the recycled sponges on the right) ... nothing but goodness!