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.

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:

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!