Callisto's Journey

Ok collective brain, I am soaking white cannelini beans.

Now, um... what can I do with them?

Kickarse recipes please?

( Garlic and Lemon Chicken with Tomato Pilaf and Mother's Birthday Cake )


Notes: The garlic and lemon chicken was lovely! I oven baked marylands rather than doing wings like in the recipe, but next time will go with wings. The skin really took on the flavours of the marinade, and it was crisp and juicy. The tomato pilaf was pretty good too, and was unusual in that in the recipe you start with 500gs of tomatoes, blend them, and then add a few bits and pieces, and use that as the water for the rice. I cheated and used a tin of tomatoes which I then blended.

The vegetable dish for the night was a lot like loobia, except it had carrots, and chickpeas. I cooked up some chick peas and made hummus for tomorrow night, and froze the rest to help me get into using them more in cooking. I want to use more legumes etc, so I have to start somewhere!
The chick peas were yummier than from a can. Weird. :-)

Ok, so we had mushroom risotto, Beef and Guiness sausages and corn last night, and it was good.

So, tonight we have stroganoff. I'm looking for kick-arse recipes for stroganoff! The Big V and I will make pasta to go with it. I have mushrooms, onions, beef, and greek style yoghurt (I often interchange natural yoghurt and sour cream) and everything else under the sun. Except sundried tomatoes.

But anyway.

Kick-arse recipes please?

Or should that be Kick-ASS Recipes PLZ?

[Poll #1178403][Poll #1178403]

- 1500 words (well, a thousand plus the 500 challenge. Except we have company tonight. Hmmm.)
- Sweep and Clean
- Check over Bills and Paperwork
- Look at Bra order (Not progressed at all. Should pout but don't have time! LOL)
- Sort out posty stuff for Babalon (well, it's in a box. Now I need to look at the material and see if there are any big bits. Or cool bits I want to make into drawstring bags. Yes, i am determined to continue with the sewing.)
- Finish Babalon-Con for Babalon before posty stuff is sent.  (This should be upgraded to find.)
- Read Eternity of Blood! (Going well! The hair down to his middle ear comment is still my favourite, but I have hit a chapter that obviously no one read before. Lots of typos, spelling mistakes, formatting errors and lost spaces.)
- Get ready for some stuff with Vinnie for the rest of the week (Hmm, working on this. I forgot one of my ideas and now it is lost int he aether. Ah well. I'm sure I will remember it later.)

- Sort out dinner.
- find thoup tureen
- make thoup
- make bread.
:-)

Life is good right now. I'm feeling good, John is feeling good, Vincent is asleep and therefore must be feeling good..

And we are having this for dinner: Honeyed Lamb Shanks for dinner. YUMMO! I'm off to start prepping for vegies. We made a big cake today. *grin*

Hey, would Connor like a duckling for his birthday? *evil grin*

( More than three ducklings this time! Just by a few... )

I can do something for pleasure other than cook! ( Speaking of which.... )

Hmmm.... which cookbook to read next??

Actually, I have just finished Thud! I enjoyed it very much. I love you Mr Pratchett! It made me cry for some of the children related bits. :-) However at the end of the novel, I had Chesh come home, plus Sprog decided it would be a good time to be a bit noisy and the TV was going and Chesh kept talking... I'll read it again later. :-) I think I remember what happened...

Still drinking guiness and expressing. It's kind of time consuming, so I have to try and time it for when Vincent is happy being alert and not really being played with much, or else when he is asleep. But, still going. Not sure how long we'll be doing this for. I'm still convinced it is worthwhile at the moment. A few more weeks of this though I might be over it.

I had fun at Swansea yesterday, and bought asparagus, basil, parsley, coriander, potatoes, beetroot, capsicum, spring onions, tomato, brussels sprouts, I thought I bought some beans but I can't find them so I guess not, apples.... artichoke hearts, dried shrimp... er... I can't remember any more! I need the dried shrimp because I have recently acquired the cookbook that lucretiae and Matt have been cooking from and I am looking forward to cooking many Chinese marvels. It also has recipes for pork and prawn dumplings, char siu bau, rice flour rolls, glutinous rice... I haven't even finished reading this one! The dim sum is the first section in the book!

Anyway, enough chatting to you all. Tomorrow is very busy! We're going to the Kelmscott Show! Cool! :-) Should be fun! I like agricultural shows. :-)

And, just cos, here is a pic of Vincent. The date is wrong. I shall fix now. :-) It's actually from the 7th of October.

Happy Vincent Vincent has been smiling, chuckling, chortling and laughing. And he has put on 500gs in a week. My arm hurts!!

Goodness, I have been watching too many cooking shows! Dinner tonight was leek and pea risotto with honey mustard garlic prawns, and the butter from the prawns drizzled around the risotto. Dessert is strawberry pudding - using Jamie Oliver's recipe from some episode of the naked chef that I have seen about four times now, I mixed up 75gs butter, 75 gs castor sugar, and then later add one egg and 75 gs self raising flour, dolloped it on top of chopped strawberries. Realising that Jamie had done his pears with a syruppy thing, I then poured a little plum port between dollops in lieu of a syrup, and popped it in the oven. Served hot with connosieur vanilla icecream.

Pics of main, but not dessert, will be posted to food porn, when I can be bothered.
:-)

However, this is food for the soul as well as for the body, so I don't feel as carbed out as I have been. Yay! Lunch today, I made pad thai. Oh, and the Franks and Beans were....OK. John liked them more than me.

Well, the oil/fat/whatever is still heating up. I'd like to ramble gently abotu how much Alton Brown has been useful to us to extend our culinary horizons, not so much in food itself, but more trying things out that were out of our comfort zone. For example, I shallow fried the other day! Woo! It may not seem like much, but it is an important step form e - I have been wanting to do things like that ever since we got the new kitchen, but I sure wasn't moving much when I was pregnant. But I am learning and extending my skills. I have now also done crepes, caramel (successfully in the end) shallow frying, deep frying, cream sauces... I should go and check out that previous list I did of things I wanted to do.

Ooo, and I should ask every one - what is their favourite gourmet shop?

I find it amusing now that I can look at anything in my fridge, and instantly come up with two or three dishes that would feature that ingredient with what I already have. I can cook a kick ass carbonara (a proper one, using egg and not cream), I can hand make my own gnocci (the last one I did was pumpkin and potato rather than just pumpkin) and we had steak with blue cheese and loobiaj (beans in a tomato onion sauce) for dinner the other night. John comes home to dinner, and if things are going well we have a glass of wine and a small serving of munchies at the table, and dinner on a nice set of crockery. I am starting to take far more care with presentation as well as putting more thought into the plates, glasses, etc. I now want to get some really nice plates, and some really nice wine glasses.

I had some more thoughts, but I was distracted by the oil being ready. Now, I have to run off and eat, cos I cooked everything up between this paragraph and the last one!!

Yum!