Saturday, January 28, 2012

m. 36 farro and puy lentil soup

a couple of days ago i asked m what we should do with the miniscule amount of farro that we had in the cupboard, her response instantly was "make farro and lentil soup!"  turns out that allegra mcEvedy had a piece in the guardian just this week on a soup that required just a little bit of lentils and just a little bit of farro (of which we had both), the soup turned out to be amazing, although as you can see i pureed it a little too much, evidence of which appears if you happen to actually go to the recipe and see how picturesque the soup is meant to look, please don't though ...

i give you my camera's lifeless version of this amazingly simple and delicious soup:


oh, and at the bottom was a tiny dill and garlic biscuit (or scone to remain true to the pan-atlantic style we've been cultivating here), we make these a lot, they are adapted from mark bittman's how to make everything vegetarian, yummy.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

m. 35 bagels

wow, a whole month has passed since our last post, little baby e has come into our world and she's so amazing, m's parents came for the birth and were able to spend a couple of weeks with us, we all cooked a lot of great things, but there was just not enough time to blog about things ... i did happen to catch m's dad's final triumph as a baker:
her dad spent every waking out depleting as much of our flour as humanly possible, everyday there were crackers or bread or granola being made, in every imaginable flavor, his birthday came and m and i bought him a copy of the river cottage handbook on bread (which he noted used no sugar in any of their bread recipes) and on his last night here he made these perfect bagels, easily the best that i have tasted in the uk ...

and to think that only a minute or two in a hot bath is what separates the average loaf of bread from the magical bagel!

the poppyseed gets another look: