Soup, crackers, yogurt

I finally got around to making the soup I've been thinking about. 

Here's why, soup weather 

So I got out the bag of stock makings from the freezer, mostly cilantro and parsley stems, and decided to make a custom stock. This just means I added some Worcestershire sauce into it to simmer.

Then, the stock now aromatically set up, I did the usual onion, garlic, salt, bit of chili powder base and made cream of celery, cabbage, dandelion greens soup. 

A sprig of curry leaves starts to add flavor as soon as it touches the hot soup.  So this was lunch, with a toasted mini naan and cheddar cheese.

Then I was idly thinking about making yogurt because I'm out, and found other ideas than my usual cow's milk. There's a chickpea version. And an oat version. I could have done either and decided oat would be good to try.

Made oat "milk" in the blender then strained it to keep out the fibrous part. This is what the recipe lady said to do. I started with the usual squeeze it in a cotton cloth, like making paneer, but had a little mishap.

This resulted in a backfire of oat slurry over the cook, the counter, the sink etc.   So I regrouped and just strained it through a fine strainer. 

Pro tip:if you've got a small lake of oat slurry on a clean counter, and you're alone in the kitchen,  you can push it back into your container using your handy bench scraper. You're welcome.

Then bring the strained stuff to the boil then let it cool before adding starter, here some of the last of the current yogurt. This version gets really thick and creamy as it cools, so I'm hopeful. 

I'll let you know tomorrow how it worked.

Late addition, here's my breakfast oat yogurt with honey. Pretty good.

However, this left me with a bowl of the fibrous part that I'd strained out. And I thought, crackers? Haven't made them for ages, but I often fancy crackers with soup or cheese.

So I checked recipes and yes, you can make this into crackers. At least the recipes pretty much got me to where I was with the bowl of stuff, so I improvised after that.

Pinch baking powder, added flour to make it dough-like and rollable , dried basil bits, dried thyme bits, all mixed into dough, rolled out, scored into sort of squares, coarse seasalt pressed into the surface, and black pepper.

Few minutes in a hot oven, 400°f

Break them apart on the scored lines.  Crackers, now in an airtight tin.  What you might call collateral crackers. Or one damn recipe after another crackers. They're pretty good.  And my frugal heart loves the good food with nothing wasted aspect of all the cooking today.

I did walk today but it was grey and cold, not interesting enough for pictures, and I was glum.

The opposite of glum, though, are the nice people emailing with interest in a little bit of art in their mail. Most of the pieces are small. So I'll be getting myself organized to pick out what I think they'll like and send it off. There's plenty, if you came in late.  This is fun. My work travels more than I do.

Happy day, everyone! Soup if it's soup weather.

Ukraine is so happy we came through, finally.  The Pentagon,its act together, says weapons are ready to ship within a week of POTUS'  signature. P***n may be wondering what happened to his widgets in Congress. Good.

Of door curtains, cabbages, cats, beads and other such things

I didn't include a picture of the door curtain yesterday, because by the time I thought of it, the light was too low for my modest camera equipment and ability.

However today is another day, or Day, and I'm busily doing whatever keeps me going.

I started with a chair yoga stretching session on YouTube, really good choice for today. I found how tense I was, and felt a lot better after the stretches. And I wondered about cooking something new.

I found a flatbread recipe, oil, flour, water, kneading, resting, rolling, and thought that might be good, best to stuff with something, but what? And while I was mulling about that I found a great cabbage recipe.

So I switched to that, for lunch.

I added in baharat because it seems to be good with cabbage. The recipe didn't specify salt so I went with that because maybe it would be fine.

That flour, Aurora Mills stoneground whole-wheat, from Maine, is expensive and worth it. I've made my best bread with it, so I'll see how it works with the flatbread.

Here's the YouTube source of the cabbage caper

Picture is of recipe cooked in Teflon, mine came out a bit different in castiron

Here's the second part, after I had to tip it out onto a plate then invert it to finish cooking. After the turning over is when the cheese is added. Then you cover it and cook a few minutes more.

As you see, the cheese is overdone but the inside cooked nicely. I think a lower heat next time. It would be prettier but probably wouldn't taste much different.

Lunch is served. Next time I will also add salt. It does need it. In fact I might saute the onions ahead with salt, while starting the cabbage, eggs and flour, then stir them in.

Anyway it's pretty good.

I also realized ah, here's what I can stuff that flatbread with. There's plenty, so maybe a couple of lunches. Which may be comfort food or victory food, depending on the next few days. Cabbage wraps. I might add in pickled beets. Or maybe on the side.

Cabbage usually gives me really psychedelic dreams, colors not on the spectrum, adventure narratives, last time involving white horses, so we'll see what tonight brings.

And about door curtains, finally I'm getting to the door curtains.  They're like this, at least mine are

Closed

Open

Not to be confused with portieres, which replace doors. Read on.

Here's an Indian wedding sari, a gift

An Indonesian artisan handwoven fringed length, a fair trade piece originally cream, which I dyed with I think onionskin dyes

And a purpose-made Japanese one, hand embroidered both sides in sashiko stitching. These are used in shop doorways to deter flies while being easy to stroll through, because of the divide. From a friend who got it in Japan, and I can't remember the correct Japanese name.

I expect you could have portieres that didn't originate in Asia, but I don't seem to have any that didn't. Funny, because Victorians were mad for them, making them of big handmade paper beads. I used to make paper beads, but not portieres of them. Because cats.

Why tear off doors? Two words: worktops, cats. When cats can come and go in closets without being shut in, needing rescue when you finally find them, or needing the door opened yet again, firm (loud)  requests on this point, you see the benefits of the portiere. The other word, worktops, is what happens to the doors. They end up in the studio with work all over them, cheap and sturdy.

I think I'll spin now.

Latest adventures in food from the farmshare

This week the share included a half head of cabbage.  If you don't do stuffed cabbage, and a half head would feed a small army with stuffed cabbage, which I don't like anyway, then what's to do?

So I cut it into wedges, steamed it till nearly tender yesterday, and put in the fridge overnight while I thawed a bag of homemade spaghetti sauce.  

Today I put the cabbage in a casserole dish, poured the spag sauce over it, grated a big helping of sharp cheddar over and a big shake of the Indian hot spicy snack I showed you some time ago as my secret weapon.  45 minutes at 390F and it was pretty nice.  

Cabbage was tender, but still had shape, sauce went well with it, and the spicy and cheesy top helped the general neediness of cabbage pretty well.  Since I'd made the spaghetti sauce, I knew there were already a lot of flavors in it, so I didn't need to add spices or salt to the casserole.

So here's my Chou Gratine, avec epices, in red sauce. This as you see would make one helping for four people, or one helping four times for moi.  Or one snack for a veggie teenage boy.