Cauliflower and cookies

This started as a plan to blog about the cauliflower dish I made last night, but as I impulse baked today I decided to combine both into a single post.

First up cauliflower steak with harissa and goats cheese. I'd been planning this for a couple of days but my lack of familiarity with the dish, combined with train delays on Friday (I guess I should be grateful I made it to my second week of commuting until I had to submit my first delay repay) meant I kept putting it off. By Sunday the cauliflower needed using and I had time to focus on cooking something which needed a little more attention. In the end it was quite simple. Slice a cauliflower, coat with harissa and top with goats cheese. Blitz breadcrumbs, pine nuts and parsley in a blender and top the cauliflower steak. Add sliced cauliflower greens and red onion to the baking tray. Drizzle with olive oil and bake for 25 minutes. Serve with cous cous and yogurt. It felt like a proper spring like dish, especially when accompanied with my first Vinho Verde of the season.

Today my brain has been very much on a Do All The Things drive. I started with a 7 mile walk for leisure, home for a cuppa, then a trip into town, before baking cookies and ironing. I'm hoping that (along with blogging) may be enough to calm it for the evening but we shall see. The cookie recipe is from a Green and Blacks cookbook bought in a charity shop several years ago. I started with creaming the butter and sugar - which was far easier on the hottest day of the year so far, than it was last time I attempted baking in a snowy February. Add egg and self raising flour. Then add vanilla essence and a little milk to form a soft dough. Finally add dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and hazelnuts (or brazil nuts if you are following the recipe, I only had hazelnuts). I may have needed to break the chocolate up a little more than I did - it wasn't easy to cut into cookies. Bake for 20 minutes while washing up and tidying the kitchen. 

Now I'm going to aim for a well earnt sit down with a cup of tea and one of the cookies and try to convince my mind monkeys there's nothing else that urgently needs doing today. Wish me luck.