Get your fibre up

 It's back to veganish week, which is just as well after last week's accidental over-sausage-menu. I will say that pancake day is severely undermining the veganishness of my overall diet, and indeed any suggestion of not overdoing things, but I've managed to keep dinners pretty veg-forward. 

That said, I'm not in love with one of my new recipe books. I had book tokens for Christmas, bought Simply and added another couple of books of the "too many pictures, fancy paper, travel wish fulfillment" style. I don't actually love either of them, which is a shame. I am a bit of a sucker for good travel food books (Kaukasis, Black Sea or Eivissa, for example), but they often lurk around being annoying for a while and then get recycled. This time I bought Andalusia (Jose Pizarro, lovely man, recipes absolutely useless to me) and a thing called Bitter Honey about Sardinian food, which sounds pretty good. 

 I've only cooked two things out of it though, and neither turned out well. A lot of the others need stuff that's a pain to get hold of, like bottarga, and, well, I shall give it another couple of goes and then give up, I reckon. Anyone want an unsatisfactory cookbook?

This was "baked cardoncelli mushrooms" of which the first problem is that there are no cardoncelli mushrooms. But it says you can use a mix of oyster and chestnut, so fine. Then you realise the recipe is just to bake them as mushroom caps with sliced garlic, oil and parsley. So... just mushrooms then? 

 

And the garlic burned in the oven, not surprisingly. Hmph. I should know better.

 

The good thing is it was one component of an ovenful of roasting stuff - rhubarb with orange and sugar, for a compote (25 mins, starting under foil), the mushrooms, and a panful of chopped cauli and parsnip which will be a soup tomorrow. 

I've also been wanting curry, and that's a good shout for vegan week. Simply, on this occasion, provided a pineapple and potato curry (kari, officially). Based on cumin seed, fennel seed, mustard seed, onion, tinned tomatoes, a shake of turmeric and cinnamon, chunked up small potatoes, a longish stew. You know the drill.

And then of course you peel and quarter your lovely fresh pineapple, griddle it and add it to the curry. 

Or, it being winter and lockdown, you open a goddamn tin. I suppose I could have griddled it. But honestly, griddling sliced canned pineapple is a step too far. So, no. I'm sure it would be more delicious, but this was good too. Keeps well, warms up tasty. Good stuff.