Change is hard

 I've been overdramatic on Twitter tonight, saying that things are falling apart. Not quite, though Mum's care is more of an issue, and Dad has lost some mobility which means I may have to go back to two visits a week to them. And there's other tedious life stuff I shan't enlarge on. But I think what's got me is that it's coincided with work from home guidance being abruptly abolished. I didn't imagine this even last week, and then I thought it was from 26th, and then yesterday it was just abolished. My work have been more than reasonable throughout it all, but all the same it turns out I had mentally marked in, I dunno, 12 weeks of homeworking or something? And now it's gone, and I am wobbling like hell. 

Have some distractingly perfect new rhubarb as compensation**

 

Thing is, we are 674 days since I first went home to work, and I've been on site maybe 20 times since. I have grooved myself new patterns. They aren't always good patterns, and they have shifted slowly over the time, but what they don't involve is an assumption of commuting to an office as an everyday sort of endeavour. It's time to change that mindset, I think. It's hard, though. 

Meanwhile, there's cooking (and recalibrating lunches, I suspect - I have plans for the next couple of weeks that don't go in tupperware). Last weekend was a time of depressed laziness, of premade dahl and the easiest pasta dish (photo at end as it's too ugly to be the header): wilted spinach with lemon and a tub of potted shrimps melted in. Capers if you like/have them/bother. Delicious and instant. 

But then there was an Ottolenghi brain fade. Don't schedule to cook him midweek, even from Test Kitchen. I know this, and I spent far too many little kitchen dashes during a busy evening to get this do-able but fiddly dish done. 

Herby dumplings with caramelised onions. The onions are easy - thickly sliced, in the oven with butter and cardamom, give them an hour and stir them a few times.** Add lemon at the end. May have overdone them a tad, but tasty.

Meanwhile, there's a cook-all-the-spring onions with parsley, coriander, dill, tarragon, and cool them and mix them with ricotta and feta (not a full pack of either) and an egg and then shape into dumplings and poach for a bit... 

 

...and then add to the onions and roast again, with parmesan. And it's fine. It's what you expect. Meh.

Better than this looks, which is cold leftovers, but perfectly edible

 But! Today, when I'm really very sad about life things, I have been cheered by the utter success of a recipe I've meant to try forever. It's at the back of Diana Henry's Food from Plenty, where she has hidden two super useful sections, on eggs and bread, after the puddings. Falls neatly into my sweet spot between lazy boring dinners and why-bother faffery.

This is a very-north-Italian dumpling recipe (yes, yes, I've done that double scheduling of similar food thing again), called canederli, and they want your spare bread. Not veggie, but I'm sure you could use this template and vegify it (spinach, plenty of seasoning and a bit more bread I reckon). So good.

First, fry a pack of pancetta bits/chopped bacon with an onion chopped very small. Get it all cooked/soft. 

 

Second, take 200g of white bread (for 4 servings), and fiddle it into crumbs. Different sizes are welcome, not too fine, don't bother with a processor. Pour 125ml milk over and leave about 15 minutes. This feels very forgiving, and I didn't faff with exact anything. I did cheat and add a smidge of flour to mine when they came out a bit wet, and they were fiiiiine.

 

Hideous but I promise it will be better

 

Once your bread is wet and your onion is cooked, mix them up with a big grating of nutmeg, plenty of pepper, two eggs, some thyme, and what's meant to be parsley but was the dregs of some tarragon in my case. Forgiving, see? Check if salt is needed, you want punchy flavours but I had loads of bacon so, no. Get some stock or salted water boiling, turn it down to a low poach, and make your dumplings:

Wet your hands, form mixture into small balls (walnut size), roll lightly in flour. Pop into the simmering liquid and give them 10 minutes or so. I used a tin of beef consomme, and watered it down a bit to give me the volume. 

Definitely a recipe where you can scrape the last bit off the spatula and bung it in the soup: there are no sharp edges and elegance here. 

Once cooked, serve as you please. Suggestions include in the stock (which I will do tomorrow with the remainder), or with butter and parmesan. I was overcome with a memory of Prague's extremely robust way with dumpings; well that and the leftover ricotta from Ottolenghi. So I did butter and ricotta plus some shavings of hard cheese and a splash of stock to lift it). And a glass of Verdesse, a cidery Alpine wine that I had in an actual wine bar round my birthday.

It's not pretty, but it's very good. And it works for timings: all the prep fits into the same 15 minutes, and you can then leave it to poach on its own. Much preferable. Go Diana Henry. Go Alpine Italians. Go keeping on going despite all.

 

 *That pasta dish. It's very nice, but it's not very pretty. 

**Let the record show I also roasted some new rhubarb (the bits I didn't immediately put into vodka) in this handy oven. Hence the header. And did the also-Ottolenghi tomatoes grilled with garlic and ginger for the rest of my lunch this week. Except my head isn't all here so I put the garlic and ginger into the oven instead of just the flavoured oil, and had to take them out half-cooked so nothing crucial burned. Woe, but it's okay. Soft-roast tomatoes are fine.