cooking – dangermouse.net

A new type of roasted cauliflower

Tuesday is my relatively easy weekday, where I mostly work on my new ethics class for the week. This weeks new topic is “Names”, and I have plenty of questions about the importance of people’s names, meanings of them, how people choose names for children, and what sort of names are appropriate or inappropriate.

At lunch time I took Scully for a long walk down the Greenwich peninsula. There are a few decent views of the city along the way.

The day was cold and very windy. The maximum temperature was 18.5°C, but for most of the day the wind pushed the “feels like” temperature below 10°C. It’s certainly the coldest feeling day so far this year. But blissfully the humidity dropped below 50%, for the first time in ages. Despite the cold, I had all the windows wide open to get some of that lovely dry air inside.

For dinner tonight I had a cauliflower and wanted to do something new with it. I searched for roasted cauliflower recipes with nuts, since I wanted to add some nuts for crunchy texture. I found this recipe for za’atar roasted cauliflower with dates and pine nuts. Glancing through the ingredients, the only thing I was missing (after checking the linked recipe for home made za’atar) was fresh thyme!

So I took Scully out for another walk about 4:30, just before the sun went down, to get some thyme from the neighbourhood grocery store. I can’t remember ever having cooked with thyme before—it’s a herb mostly used with meats, which I don’t cook. I told my friends in our Discord chat that I was cooking with thyme for possibly the first time in my life, and one said, “You could have said that you’ve never bought a potato before and I’d be similarly surprised.” Interestingly, I smelled the thyme, to get a sensory impression of it, and the smell reminded me of… za’atar! I’ve eaten a lot of za’atar with bread and oil—it’s a common accompaniment to bread at restaurants here. And it has this distinctive aroma, which I now know is from the thyme that is a primary ingredient in za’atar.

I altered the recipe slightly, substituting crunchy roasted almonds for the pine nuts (though I had pine nuts) because I wanted more crunch in the final dish. And I made a lemon tahini dressing to drizzle over the top.

It turned out really delicious! Another one to add to the repertoire.

12,000 steps

My wife took Scully to work for the morning today. This gave me time to go for a 5k run, as well as do my stretches and have a shower, before heading out to lunch. I also got some sourdough bread going.

For lunch I caught a train to my wife’s work and had lunch at a Japanese place there. They have a nice lunch special consisting of a bowl of miso soup, salad, rice, and your choice of protein. Sometimes I get salmon or something else, but today I got karaage chicken.

Then after eating I picked up Scully and we walked home. We walked a long way home, doing a big dogleg via Naremburn rather than the straight route. So Scully was pretty knackered by the time we got home. With that huge walk and my 5k run, I scored around 12,000 steps today.

I’m pretty lazy making sourdough and have been letting it rise just once before baking. But today I gave the dough a second kneading and rising after it had doubled in volume the first time. I’m hoping it makes a less dense final product. It seems to have turned out okay, but I’m not sure if it’s made all that much difference.

Tonight I had the first three classes of this week’s new ethics topic: “Socialisation”. I was supposed to have one yesterday, but the class ended up with no students in it due to one having an extended vacation, and others leaving the class time. The paused student will be back next week, so I’m hoping someone else enrols before then to avoid a class with just one kid in it. This week’s new topic so far feels easier to teach than the last two weeks’ ones.

I’ve been adding photos to my Flickr album for my Japan trip back in February. I want to get it completed before leaving for Europe next month! Here’s our travelling companion, Monkey, at the Kawazu Sakura Festival:

The sakura (cherry blossoms) there were really beautiful.

This one (below) is the original Kawazu Zakura cultivar tree, planted around 1955, which turned out to be a mutation that flowered early, leading to Kawazu being the place to go for February cherry blossoms, a month or two earlier than anywhere else in Japan.

Such a beautiful place.

Did I miss yesterday?

I’ve realised with some shock that I totally forgot to write up a blog post yesterday. I don’t know what happened – I must have got distracted around my usual evening routine and it slipped my mind and I went into autopilot mode and never got back to it. Oh well.

Yesterday wasn’t especially interesting anyway. The most noteworthy thing was that it rained most of the day. We’re in a very wet spell, which is supposed to last another week or so. I did venture out in the car to a kitchen shop to buy an induction plate for our stove top. My wife bought a small Italian coffee maker, the sort that you put on a stove top to boil the water and it percolates up through the coffee grounds. We had an old aluminium one, but since it didn’t work on induction we got rid of it when we switched from gas to induction. My wife found one with a steel base that claimed to work on induction cookers, but it turned out to be too small to be detected by our cooktop, and didn’t work. You can buy these steel plates with a handle that you stick on the induction zone and it gets hot, and you can put the coffee pot on top, and it works! So she tested that and it works a treat.

For dinner I cooked spaetzle, and decided to make a cheese sauce to go with it, kind of like macaroni and cheese. I’ve never cooked mac and cheese in my life before, so I had to look it up. But when I found a recipe that said it was basically just a roux-based cheese sauce, I knew what to do without any further help. It turned out pretty good, although I made too much sauce!

Overnight I had an interesting dream: I was a scholar studying appearances of mysterious chefs throughout history, as documented by contemporary accounts. A chef who would suddenly appear out of nowhere with an assistant, cook amazing and revolutionary recipes for the poor and then vanish without a trace. I concluded they were all the same chef time travelling through history. Then one day as I was studying this, the assistant appeared and said he had come to take me back through time, because I was the mysterious chef, since I’d studied and learnt all of the original recipes that I’d introduced to the world.

Today my wife had the day off, so this morning we walked up to the nearest pre-polling centre for Saturday’s election.

Unfortunately I misread the rain radar and it was absolutely pouring for the 20-minute walk to the polling place. By the time we got there, my trousers were soaking wet from the thighs down, my socks and shoes were soaking wet – despite using an umbrella. But we voted, and won’t have to do it on Saturday, when it might possibly be pouring just as much and when everyone else will be voting. Fortunately the rain stopped while we were voting, and the walk home was dry.

For lunch we drove over to Two Chaps at Marrickville. This is a fantastic vegetarian cafe we’ve been to a few times. I tried the hash browns with poached eggs and mixed greens:

My wife had the sourdough crumpets with baked cauliflower, almonds, and capsicum sauce:

Yeah, they both taste as amazing as they look!

Last night I had the first class for this week’s new ethics topic, Flight, and tonight three more. It’s an interesting one, as we talk about the history of light and possible futures where we consider if people will have to fly less to help reduce climate change, and the challenges that might pose.

A baking accident

Last night I baked a rye sourdough loaf, but when I turned the oven temperature down and removed the bowl of hot water (to generate steam for the first part of baking), I forgot to reset the oven timer. I only noticed about 30-40 minutes later, and jumped up suddenly, thinking it would be a block of charcoal.

But it looked salvageable, and as it cooled I tried cutting a slice and had it with orange marmalade, and it was crunchy but fine. Today I used it for sandwiches at lunch.

And wow, it was good! The rye sourdough I’ve been making has been fine, but nothing like the German rye bread I remember from my childhood. But this was much more like it! The crust was thick and chewy and tasted great. So I think this is a happy accident, and in future I might just bake my bread longer.

In other photos, I took this one of a white-faced heron the other day:

And a mushroom, sprouting in the wet weather:

Today I did my 5k run and we dodged rain showers again when heading out after lunch with Scully. We dropped in at the library and borrowed some books for reading. I found a new Asterix title which I haven’t read before, so that should be fun!

Saga of a door

Our new front door was supposed to be painted today. The workman arrived in the morning, but then vanished for a few hours. When he returned he said that he’d been driving around to different hardware stores looking for the specific moulding style and size that is on all of the other apartment front doors, so that he could install matching moulding on ours before painting. But he’d been unable to find it anywhere.

So he asked if I’d be around next week and said he’d go further afield and try to find the matching moulding, and then come back to affix and paint next week. So we have another week with an unpainted wooden door.

After lunch I took Scully for a long walk, around the harbour shore. I stopped at the Grumpy Baker in an attempt to get a snack, but after waiting a few minutes with nobody serving me (I was the only one waiting to be served), I gave up and left. This bakery used to be really good, but their service has always been slow, and I’ve soured on them a bit recently. Instead I went to the nearby cafe which opened recently and decided to see what they had. There were a few muffins and small cakes, and they had a caramel slice that looked good, so I got one of those. It turned out to be delicious, with chewy caramel, which is not usual in a caramel slice. Really good. So I’m glad I went there!

Down by the water we met a woman with a small caramel-coloured dog, and as she approached she picked up her dog and carried her past. I said hello and she explained her dog was very shy. I said Scully was a bit too, and she stopped and carefully put her dog down. It was named Indy. The two dogs both approached one another very carefully and slowly, and eventually had a close sniff and hello. Scully is very gentle with other dogs and the woman was happy that Indy seemed to be friendly with her. She said it would be good for Indy to have positive experiences with other dogs. So I stayed there for several minutes as the two of them got used to each other and relaxed. It did seem that Indy was more shy than Scully. The woman seemed very happy with this, so that was good.

This evening I made a new experimental pasta sauce, using half a left over sweet potato from last night’s couscous dish. I boiled it up and then pureed it with semi-dried tomatoes and paprika to make a pasta sauce, served over fusilli, with chopped almonds for some crunch. It was pretty good.

Booking Tokyo

Today was very warm, 31°C in the city, 39°C in some suburbs. I did a 5k run in the morning, reluctantly, as it was already almost 25°C at 9am.

Back home, I had two main tasks for the day. First I photographed a new batch of Irregular Webcomic! strips, based on the scripts I’ve been writing the past few days. This is really getting near the end. I wound up a few of the story themes and there’s not much left to do with the remaining ones. I expect I might be able to finish completely with one more batch of comics, probably made late January or early February.

The second task was to book several of the things we’d planned out for Tokyo at my sister-in-law’s place yesterday. We booked a tea ceremony, in Ginza. And a day trip tour to Hakone to see Mount Fuji. These things will be done by the others while I am working in ISO Photography standards meetings. I also want to book tickets to the Shibuya Sky observation deck, but they only open for booking four weeks in advance, so that has to wait until the end of January.

While booking those, I also booked a car rental for Auckland for our short trip to New Zealand in March. This is only a 3-day trip over the weekend to visit my wife’s nephew and his partner there for their combined 30th birthdays. My wife’s sister and mother are going too, but they are arriving several days earlier and spending a week there. We’re going to collect the car from the airport on Friday and go pick them up at their hotel to drive up to the Bay of Islands for the weekend, before coming back to Auckland for departure on Monday.

I assembled some of the IWC comics. And then spent a bit of time in the afternoon pondering story details for Episode IX in Darths & Droids, discussing with co-authors, and making notes. It’s quite a shift in mode from normal strip writing in the middle of a movie. I have to switch mental gears and get refamiliarised with the new movie. I’ve spent the past two years viewing scenes from Episode VIII over and over again, and now I have to discard all of that and start on the new movie. I’ve rewatched it twice in the past few weeks, including one time through in slow motion, rewinding and pausing every minute or so to catch details and make notes.

For dinner I made pizza, topped simply with potato and rosemary. I used a couple of tips I saw on a cooking show last week. Because I’m using a domestic oven rather than a pizza oven, the temperature is lower and the pizza cooks more slowly (though still pretty quickly as I use the maximum temperature). So one tip is to add more water to the dough, since it has longer to dry out in the oven. I increased the water from a strict 1:2 ratio with the flour, adding an extra 5 mL to make 130 mL of water to 250 g of flour. And I hand-stretched the dough by first using my fingers to delineate a fatter crust around the rim before flattening and stretching the central area. Overall both changes worked well!

New content today:

Christmas cooking and Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve dawned clear and cold. The temperature dropped down to 16.5°C overnight, and it was still chilly when we got up and I took Scully out for her morning toilet. My wife then took her for a walk, while I did a 5k run. The cooler temperature meant an easier run, and I managed to record my second best 5k time, at 26:24.

After a shower it was time to cook some mini quiches to take to my family’s Christmas Eve gathering in the afternoon. My wife had made the pastry an hour earlier, and I rolled it out into a dozen small circles, which she put into muffin tins to blind bake. Then we chopped spinach and mixed the eggs and some milk to make the filling, which she poured into the pastry shells, then baked another 25 minutes.

We took care of some other last minute prep and then drove out to the western suburbs of Sydney for my family’s gathering. It’s become a new tradition to gather in a park by the shore of the Nepean River.

I’m really surprised that nobody else uses it for Christmas Eve. We basically have the whole place to ourselves every year. This time there were a few other people there, but only very small gatherings, like four people eating lunch, and a couple on a picnic blanket. Our group was a total of 21 people once everyone had arrived, plus Scully. We had finger food and snacks, and fresh fruit, plus one of my cousins’ wife had made some caramel slice for sweets – all together it was plenty for a lunch.

Some of the people played a lawn game involving throwing chunks of wood at wooden pins, while the rest of us caught up on family news and gossip. I see things about horror family gatherings, but everyone in my family genuinely gets along very well, so these events are always good fun.

My uncle does wood turning and gave us a hand-made vase:

There’s a hole in the top with a glass tube in it to hold the water and flowers.

We left after a few hours to drive back home – the trip each way took an hour so it was a substantial chunk of time. Back home I made dinner. I got an idea off the Italian home shopping network cooking videos that I’ve been watching for language practice. They made a pizza dough and then made small parcels stuffed with ricotta and something else (pancetta I think). And then pan-fried them! So I decided to make spinach and ricotta ones.

I made a Napolitana sauce with tomato, onion, garlic, basil, oregano, and a hint of chilli to go on top.

Then after eating my wife made a zucchini loaf to serve as a vegetarian main course at Christmas lunch with her family tomorrow. It has zucchini, carrots, onions, cheese, and a bit of flour to bind it together. Phew!! And tomorrow morning before heading out to the lunch I need to glaze and bake the ham.

New content today:

Christmas prep: treat cooking

My wife, having this week off work, spent much of today in the kitchen, making various Christmas treats. More of the chocolate date balls she made yesterday, and some rocky road.

On the other hand, my day was full of online classes. My normal topic week goes from Tuesday to Monday, so I wanted to have the Monday classes before finishing for the year. Four during the day, and two late in the evening.

We also had to go out driving for a couple of chores. Altogether, this pretty much filled up the day. There wasn’t really a spare moment to do much else.

New content today:

Busy Baking Bits

I made sourdough bread today, and I made pizza for dinner. Tonight we had mushroom pizza, which is a topping we don’t have too often.

Again, it was a pretty standard day. I had a bunch of classes to teach. And in between I worked on next week’s new topic, which is Time Passing. I’ll be asking the kids questions about what things change over time, how fast, why, and what’s good and bad about how things change. We’ll also look at aspects of nostalgia, and looking forward to the future.

The reason I did it today instead of waiting until Tuesday like I normally do is that tomorrow I’m planning to go out in the morning and spend the time doing some stuff I wouldn’t normally get to do. This is because my wife is going to take Scully to work, so I won’t have to look after her at all, and I can go places that I wouldn’t be able to take a dog. I’m thinking I might do the Bondi to Coogee walk.

New content today:

Pancakes for dinner

I’ve been trying to feed my sourdough starter a bit more frequently to get it in a healthier condition, so I’ve been generating some starter discard. And so I’ve been looking for ways to use it. Tonight my wife went to a painting class, so I made diner for myself, and decided to use the discard as the basis of a pancake batter. I just added an egg, a splash of milk, and some baking powder, and it came to the right consistency. I had the pancakes with ricotta, fresh strawberries, and maple syrup.

They turned out really nice! It’s a little strange having a sweet dinner, but it can be fun every now and then.

Today was the fourth lecture of the image processing course, with the professor back after I filled i for last week’s lecture. he reminded me that it wasn’t actually my first official coursework lecture – I did lecture 4 (today’s topic) last year when he was away! I wrote about it back then. He read my blog and pointed out how I was now Wrong On The Internet, so I feel duty bound to correct it. 😀

I decided after the lecture to head home on the normal train rather than the new Metro, since the best walking route home fro the Metro stop is still messed up by work on the pedestrian crossing lights, necessitating a significant detour. I think the old train is quicker overall at the moment.

I also went ot the post office this morning to mail some more Magic cards to a buyer. And while there I hopped over to Moon Phase (the croissant place) and tried one of the char siu buns. I’ve wanted one for a while, but they’ve been sold out the last couple of times. But today I got one. And wow, it’s amazing. It’s a next level steamed pork bun (char siu bao). Instead of the steamed doughy bun, it’s light flaky croissant pastry with a super crispy top. It was so good.

New content today: