Better day! and food ahoy

Energy starting to flow back, and coughing much better, and general spirits rising once again, thanks in part to the encouragement I got in here, and via email, thank you all! anyway, cooking happened.  Also a lot of studio work, for which go here

I made the Lemon Basmati Rice from Plenty More, as usual, very labor intensive, but really worth it.  One thing about this book, you have to really inspect the instructions to see all the sneaky time lapses they fit in. 

Such as saying add the basmati rice, and you're about to do that, when you read on: which you have soaked in water for 25 minutes, then rinsed, then allowed to drain.  That sort of thing lengthens your work time quite a bit. I think he forgets we don't have prep cooks and sous chefs at hand. And that we're old and cranky and when all else fails, read the directions.

Anyway, it also uses quite a few curry leaves, which is good because I have a backlog of them.  And the liquid is a lovely mixture of spices and herbs, in which you bake the rice, with a covering of parchment paper then foil.  I didn't have cinnamon sticks since I'd ground them all up, but ground cinnamon is fine anyway.

What happens when you remove the coverings at the end of the process is accidental art: this is how the parchment paper looked, no assist from me.

And after the rice had its butter and lemon added, and was fluffed up, I served it to me with slices of lovely free range farm chicken sausage, which I'd roasted along with the rice, same oven, same heat, worked nicely.

This has made about six main meals, some of which I'll feed to other people.  And it's a wonderful step up from ordinary old rice.
Also if I need to keep resting now and then I have some great food in the freezer, easy to heat and eat. 

Going to lie down a bit now. Maybe I'll find a nice Royal scandal movie on Youtube..secret vice.