Monday 18 February 2019

Just Cooking


Sometimes my cooking is succesful, looks good and tastes good.
Sometimes I have failures though rarely disasters

Uusually I blame the fiascos on someone who has given me the evil eye.  

This time I'll have to take the rap.  I had a day of fiascos one after the other


A lemon cake using a whole lemon, softened and turned into pulp, peel and all.  It sank in the middle, heaven knows why.  It was delicious though and the next one came out perfectly






My sourdough loaf came out rather black on top.  I cooked it in a covered dish and after the first half hour I took off the lid and turned down the heat. Only I didn't turn down the heat, it cooked away at 220o.  Far too hot.  Tasty bread though.  I sprinkled the top with water and covered it with a cloth and instead of being hard and brittle the crust was soft and chewy and full of flavour



Traditional lentil soup
The lentils were a little too hard and I put a hot pepper in the pot which made it too spicy for our liking.  But we ate the soup and it was lovely and 'warming' on the cold winter's day

Lentils and dried beans have to be relatively fresh.  The longer they stay in the packet or in the cupbaord, the harder they will be and they'll need more cooking.  These must have been old stock.  Next time I'll buy them by the kilo in a brown bag from our organic shop.  

12 comments:

  1. That bread looks perfect, just the way I like it. Note to self: check lentils. I reckon some of mine are a couple of years old - oops!

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    1. The crust was really hard when it came out of the oven so spraying it with water was a great idea. It was delightfully chewy

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  2. Well, any "misses" or "near-misses" presently, can be blamed on The Full Moon! Feb. 19th is the Full Super Moon!!!

    It's the Full Super _Snow_ Moon here, but I'm sure you have your own name for it. (Not snow)

    Hope you can see it, rise over the water. How beautiful that must be!!!!

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    1. We see the moon come up from behind a mountain. It slowly rise lighting up the whole hillside

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  3. It all looks very tasty especially that Lemon cake.

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    1. The lemon cake is really good. Lemony and not too sweet. I've made it a couple of times. The recipe calls for lemon syrup on top but I don't add that.
      Recipe on blog 'english kitchen'

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  4. Some Lentils have a mind of their own. Occasionally they soften very quickly, and at other times they just refuse. The only thing I do know, is not to put salt in the water.

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    1. We don't add salt till the end but elderly relatives of ours always add the salt right at the start of cooking and never have hard lentils or beans.
      Maybe it's just luck or its a lifetime of experience for these maiden aunts . Whatever they cook is tastier than I can produce

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  5. I am a big lentil and bean fan, they provide so much protein and they are filling.

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    1. We eat lentils, beans or chickpeas once a week, maybe more in the winter and during Lent. They're a big part of the diet here

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  6. Everything seemed delicious to me. I was glad to read that not only I make mistakes in cooking sometimes.

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    1. I have a very picky husband so I'm told when my cooking is not so good so I'm very aware of mistakes. He does praise as well thank goodness

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