NotARisotto strikes again

Sunday night. Another week in prospect. Weird how the absence of commute and the new general permissiveness to working hours around Life Happening still doesn't make Sunday evenings less of a transitional period.

Things I feel better about: I got my laundry back (hurrah), my fridge is better organised and there's space in the freezer, the skies are blue and beautiful, I unjammed a plastic cap from my hoover hose and now it actually sucks up dust, I had two proper yoga classes today without much concession to them being online so I am well stretched, I have started reading a fiction book and paying attention to it for at least 15 minutes at a time. Routine is a thing.

Things I feel worse about: social media, mainly. A whole new wave of behaviour policing makes me feel I'm doing lockdown wrong. Oh well. I am still cooking.

A wise person has just pointed out that risotto seems to be the official quarantine food, certainly hereabouts. I've also just been reading about worries re rice supplies. So :-/

I was planning a risotto this weekend because I have more asparagus, and that's an excellent combination. But I thought I'd ring the changes a bit to try a different grain, just in case. Claire Thomson's The Art of the Larder is brilliant for this kind of thing - cupboard cooking with fresh additions. She had a slightly weird-sounding thing that also needed eggs, and since I'd just managed to get some fresh eggs, it sounded like a time to use up some of my elderly stock.

So, it's... Oatmeal with Eggs and Asparagus. Yep. That's a thing.

A Thing. But a pretty one.

Make up oats into porridge - any oats, apparently. I'm sure I've got pinhead oats somewhere (made parkin, unsuccessfully, last November), but those I have not been able to find. So I used rolled oats, which have less texture and made it less risotto-y. Never mind, though they were a bit dispiriting viewed on their own. Add salt before cooking.

Also a Thing. Yawn

But then things started to cheer up. Blanch some asparagus for a couple of minutes. Melt some butter in an overproof pan, drop the porridge in and spread it out. Then scatter the asparagus over and into the porridge, pressing some down into the goop. Make a few wells in the porridge and drop eggs in. Scatter over parmesan and smoked paprika. Suddenly, it's all looking rather pretty.

Oven bake till the egg whites are cooked (only a few minutes). It comes out rather luscious, with the cheese and paprika over it. I needed to season it up a bit, and a squeeze of lemon was welcome. But still, it didn't feel like a bad idea of a dish, despite being a bit odd by my usual sense of what dinner is.

Plus, I'd put some heads of garlic in to roast beforehand, and chasing this with a full head of garlic removes any possibility of blandness.

Gorgeous spring garlic deserves fancy treatment

I also had rhubarb in the oven, as I'm still trying this oven efficiency lark. I'd found a roast rhubarb recipe with damson gin, orange juice and rosemary (plus sugar), and randomly I had all those things, the orange and rosemary both needing to be used up. Cover with foil, roast about 30 mins. It's perfectly fine, though I think I'd rather take the foil off halfway next time - it came out very drippy, and rather ugly as it's regular rhubarb rather than forced, so greenish.... But still vitaminaceous. I'd still rather have an actual crumble though. Next time, maybe.