Weekend Cooking

This weekend I made an effort to keep track of the various things that were cooked. I find the eco bulbs that we have around the house rather a yellow light to photograph under so pictures of meals don’t always happen in the winter, but I thought I would go ahead anyway to see what came out at the end.

I made these Walnut Shortbread stars for a friend’s birthday, a nice recipe and they are not too sweet. The paper bags are from Japan, I stocked up on quite a few food gift bags when I was there are they have much more interesting designs than the ones I see here.

A handful of dried cranberries and a small spoon of agave nectar are my current favourite porridge topping.

I made this Pounded Walnut Strozzapreti dish on Saturday night. Really really good. I made it again today, it seems nicer when you don’t roast the walnuts too long, just enough to get them warm and oily. I roasted them too long the second time and it was still nice but gave it more of a praline taste which was not as good as the first go when it tasted more like pine nuts. I also found that I didn’t need as much olive oil as the recipe mentions.

Since the new year we have been slowly slowly having a clearout of our freezer so that I could defrost it, finally all we had left were some frozen berries and mango from the summer. I whizzed these up with some soya milk with a hand blender, I was going for a smoothie but it looked pretty tasty when I was halfway there so I stopped and had it in a more sorbet form. Very refreshing and not as sinful as it looks, it only contained soya milk and fruit.

My sister sent me some wholewheat hot cross buns that she had made :) We have a bit of a parcel exchange going, often books or edible things. My last parcel to her contained some pieces of my Earl Grey Barm Brack. It is really nice coming home to unexpected treats! My sister is a really good and inventive knitter and she sometimes knits these cute little fruit people and also in the parcel was Mr Tomato Head which I was lucky enough to be given. You can see him below.

Mr Tomato Head has to be carefully guarded from the cats as they have taken a keen interest in him.

It was the Chinese New Year on Sunday as well as Valentine’s Day. We both love going out to eat but Valentine’s Day doesn’t always seem to be the best day to eat out, I don’t like those special Valentine’s menus. So this year we stayed in to cook a meal in celebration of the Chinese New Year. I made these Steamed Vegetable Dumplings (Zhēngjiǎo) from Andrea Nguyen’s book Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Pot Stickers and More I used her Basic Dumpling Dough recipe and it is so very much better than bought wrappers. I am never ever buying wrappers again! It is much easier to form the dumplings with homemade dough, and so easy to make – just flour and water. I am really enjoying reading this book, it is laid out very clearly, every step of the recipe is explained carefully so I think it would be suitable for even inexperienced cooks.

Simon cooked scallops and ginger, really tasty. Normally around here, because of interests and schedules, I cook and he washes up which suits us both very much, but he is a good cook when he gets a chance.  I am pleased that I have influenced him into using the big Japanese cooking chopsticks to cook with :)