The dog has been sitting on my shoulder the last 10 days or so and it has definitely been reflected in my cooking because I had a couple of spectacular disasters. One of those was a French Onion Tart which is usually brilliant, but I forgot to blind bake the pastry, so it was too soft. And I didn't cook the onions for long enough to get to that sweet stage they need to be in. And I put them into the egg/cream mixture before they were cold, which meant that the egg started to get grainy and once it was baked, when I cut into it, instead of a nice soft/solid, or possibly solid/soft custard to keep the onions together, it had kind of scrambled, so it was like oniony scrambled eggs in a not crispy pie shell - sigh. Not my finest hour!
Then there was the 'oh my god it's really hot' day last Saturday when I made pizza, and I left the rolled out dough on the pizza pan sitting on the counter, and when I picked it up, the pan stuck because the dough was melting through the holes in the bottom of the pizza pan, and I spent 10 minutes trying to press them back up into the base with my finger. A fish slice wielded in anger was used to get the subsequent cooked pizza off of the pan, because it was welded.
The last couple of days the weather has been awful - it was cold and wet on Canada Day, so our little flag looked droopy and miserable. Since it felt like autumn, or fall as they say over here, I decided to cook Pork Stroganoff, a dish for some reason I only cook in autumn and winter, possibly because I got this version out of the Delia Autumn book years ago.
I had a piece of pork fillet that was in danger of freezer burn that needed using, so that got sliced up. Some sour cream got mixed with a combination of dijon, whole grain and english mustard. Flash fried the pork strips, added sliced onion and mushroom, then added the sour cream/mustard mixture and a little white wine and cooked it down a bit. I'd soaked a few dried mushrooms so added them at the end for extra flavour. Served with rice, and I had some turmeric rice left over from another dinner so that got mixed in.
A bit like Melinda said the other day about skordalia - it's not a pretty looking dish, but it tastes good and you can kick up the flavour punch as much as you like depending on how much mustard you put in.
Hopefully both the weather and my cooking will brighten up in the coming week, and I hope everyone else is doing well.
Then there was the 'oh my god it's really hot' day last Saturday when I made pizza, and I left the rolled out dough on the pizza pan sitting on the counter, and when I picked it up, the pan stuck because the dough was melting through the holes in the bottom of the pizza pan, and I spent 10 minutes trying to press them back up into the base with my finger. A fish slice wielded in anger was used to get the subsequent cooked pizza off of the pan, because it was welded.
The last couple of days the weather has been awful - it was cold and wet on Canada Day, so our little flag looked droopy and miserable. Since it felt like autumn, or fall as they say over here, I decided to cook Pork Stroganoff, a dish for some reason I only cook in autumn and winter, possibly because I got this version out of the Delia Autumn book years ago.
Hopefully both the weather and my cooking will brighten up in the coming week, and I hope everyone else is doing well.
Sorry you've been having a low few days. Not surprising, what with *everything*, and some unhelpful weather. I'm afraid I did laugh at the pizza dough, though. Sometimes life is just against you.
ReplyDeleteLet's hope the stroganoff is a start of brighter things. It sounds delicious.
Yeah, I know we've all had our moments over the last few months, so I was due for another round of it, and the weather definitely hasn't helped! The pizza dough thing is hilarious in retrospect. The melting dough was coming through the holes in little spikes - it looked like a wee iron maiden done in dough! :)
DeleteThe stroganoff was good. Sometimes you just need easy comfort food. Tonight is curry. One of our best curry houses also does freezer packs direct from their kitchen, so we've availing ourselves of one of those tonight. Though I still fancy your crab linguine!
Cooking disasters are necessary! So you can laugh in the future! The stoganoff looks good.
ReplyDeleteCooking disasters are just part of fun in the kitchen! :) The stroganoff was really good and is always one of my stand by cooks through autumn and winter.
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