• 

• 

It’s a rainy day, I needed something hearty and down to earth. The sauce was a bit unorthodox, cumin, star anise and cocoa powder made it more like a beef chili rather than what you’d usually put in a shepherd’s pie, but the basics stay the same. Some veggies, topped with mashed potatoes, a hint of cheese, baked until you get a nice crust. Serve hot, sit in front of a hearth and warm yourself.

Well, when it comes to attempting pizza, this is a marked improvement, but what you don’t see here is the 5 minute wrestling match with the pizza peel complete with panicked arm flailing and minor burns that preceded it. Worst of it all, the longer you take, the more the pizza sticks and the more you start to draw from a colorful treasure trove of curse words that do nothing to help.

One fine day I was overcome by the thought that maybe I should use my baking steel a bit more. So I mixed a dough, undeterred by the fact that I didn’t have enough yeast, a long proof should do the trick. The steps were memorized, my imagination was already painting a vivid picture of a nice round pizza pie with a bubbly crust, and then the reality of shaping the damn thing slapped me in the face like Einarr’s open right hand. What was I thinking? I can shape a country loaf, I can shape a rectangular sandwich loaf, but pizza? It proved to be a battle to hard for my amateurish hands and I ended up with more like a pide, pizza’s distant cousin. And to top it off I didn’t use enough flour so the thing stuck to the peel. What a mess, albeit a still pretty edible one. Time will tell if the second ball of dough I still have will fare better.

The vegetarian option? Why yes of course. Roasted broccoli, tangy goat cheese and regular cheese melted into it and a spicy tahini, mayo, ketchup sauce. *Scrunch*, certainly easier to hunt a head of broccoli than say a wild boar.

• 

• 

Get bored with regular potatoes sitting around in a stew? Grate ’em, press ’em, mix with breadcrumbs, onions (didn’t have them so scallions it was) and egg, and fry them until golden brown. Could’ve used less egg, but the crispy crust was sublime. Hm, I should try the ones I have left with some smoked salmon.

Update: Yup, smoked salmon unsurprisingly works as well. served with some spinach and a spicy dill mayo.

• 

• 

• 

If you can’t go on vacation you gotta bring the vacation to you. Continuing my streak of frying things I decided to tackle a staple of far away sunny lands, croquetas with chorizo. Trickier than I thought. Harf of them turned out well, harf of them started falling apart. All of them were very tasty though. To make amends for the harf/harf outcome and to complete the picture, I poured myself a glass of iced Patxaran. Cheers.
Crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside, whoever invented those deserves a high five.

I was in the mood for something crispy, so it ended up being panko fried turkey tenders. Served with a spicy miso cocktail sauce, hmm. The roasted broccoli is strictly for easing my health conscience.

The pecorino is traditional, but using chorizo is not, fusion cooking?

Who said that stuff has to be sweet? Blend some eggs with onion, parmesan cheese, herbs and melted butter, dunk the bread and fry ’em up. It’s kinda like Knödel in rectangular form when you think about it.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

In all the boredom Alduhir decided to gather the group together to play a game or something, I dunno, it sounded like you pick roles and roll dice or something, and since he mentioned that it might go long I wanted to make sure people are well fed. Playing games while hangry is a mortal sin.
Huh, I’ve never baked two loaves of bread in one day before, and it’s pretty challenging to juggle the timing. Because once you throw the yeast in it’s on, and only a matter of time until that fungus has consumed all the flour. Sounds kinda weird when you spell it out like that but the end result is some nice and airy bread. Well, after you do the preferment, autolyse, mix in the salt, bulk proof, do stretch & folds to develop gluten, preshape, bench rest, shape, final proof, score and bake in a blazingly hot oven (lovely on a warm late summer day like this), and THEN, you hopfully get some nice, airy bread with a bubbly, crispy crust. Timing is everything, the first loaf went harf an hour *glug* over, and it didn’t rise as nicely as the second one.
So wait, what are the game rules again?