Resting on Laurels today

Machboos rubyan was a great success. Handsome Son did it great justice and the evening went FIIIIIIINE.

The overhead light is a task light, very white, for working, so it washed out a lot of color.  But the dish, by the usual table light, was fine, lovely and golden and browned, sizzling hot, smelling like a Bahreini kitchen!

The halibut, a first for me, was just lovely, cooked along with the shrimp, both ready together. 

Anyway it came off really well. And the hand-dipped chocolates and tea afterwards were decadent.

I feel like someone who completed a big project! And we discussed other ways with the same rice, such as hot sausage..this has possibilities. It's definitely joined the repertoire.

Meanwhile, back at the Kindle, I'm reading this

I'm not a big Gilbert fan, usually find her too excitable and breathless and sound-bitey, but this came recommended by Flossie Teacakes, from whom I learned to love English paper piecing, so I thought I'd try it.

She has a couple of interesting ideas about creating. One is that it's not the realm of a chosen few, which I very much agree on. Another is that whether you make a living or not from your creative work, is irrelevant to the work, yes to that too. And you need to honor your ideas when they arrive, not set them aside for a better time. 

She notes the phenomenon where several unrelated people are seized by the same idea at the same time, no way of knowing about the others. Happens in science, math, writing. It can cause a lot of heartburn, too, people thinking their idea was stolen. 

Happened to her and Ann Patchett about a novel. They handled it in a very classy way. That's a story worth your reading.

So far, so good. I may take these pearls and let the rest of the book go. And she'd probably say fine, my work is done! She's nothing if not good natured. 

I have zero commitments on my schedule today. Maybe I will finally try one of those jigsaw puzzles I've been keeping for January, just in time for February..

And dinner is leftover spicy rice with some fresh cooked shrimp and halibut. Hygge.

Part Three of Boud's Excellent Yesterday

I did, after all, get power back in time for this Textiles and Tea, with Murray Gibson. Blogger refuses to insert the image here, so read on.

He turned out to be a lot less grim than his picture. His driving force as a tapestry weaver, is to create works that are best exoressed in cloth. 

This is not as obvious as it seems, as you'll see when you note people painting what photography can do, or drawing what weaving would do better, or stitching what painting would work better for. Every subject doesn't belong in any old medium.

He's also interesting  in that he's equally at home creating realistic images and abstractions. He explains this as realism seizing a moment in material life, and abstraction seizing an idea.

Left, realistic image, right abstraction.

The spider is his signature on every tapestry, signifying the weaver, spiders being the best weavers of all, even creating their own thread.

The bottom image is about the work done by young students in the l'Arche program, like ARC in the US, I think, an agency to support and offer opportunity to young people with cognitive disability.  He's very involved in spending time with the participants in this program, and finds that they love studying and working in tapestry.

He's very ready to acknowledge the teaching he's had and the debt he owes to great teachers. He seems to have continued the tradition of generous teaching, since a lot of the comments were shout-outs to his own teaching!

He currently teaches college level and is in fact teaching this morning on Zoom, and

 trying to adapt to this new way of teaching, enforced by Covid. 

Check his website. He's a very good tapestry weaver and a nice man, great combo.

That was part Three of yesterday.

Today is the next stage of the Dinner. 

Prepping the fish, and the halibut separated very easily, so the fish is all marinating now, to cook at the last minute. After which I'll dress it in the lemon juice and garlic mixture in the bowl.

The onions are not quite caramelized but nearly, and I'll reheat them with the rice this evening.

Meanwhile, here's what I hope to live by

Boud's excellent Three Part Day

Not exactly planned that way, but here goes.

Part One was the rice part of the Dinner.

This took most of the morning, just as well I divided the cooking over a couple of days. It's not just about time, when a person gets older, it's about energy too. I need enough left to enjoy the meal and the company tomorrow.

Anyway, started with a debate. The recipe says firmly to leave the rice soaking in water for two hours. The rice people say never do that, never, you'll drain off flavor and nutrition. So  I  did soak and drain, but saved the rice water for soup, see below.

Then the assembly of the doings and the discovery that I didn't, after all, have ground coriander which I was sure I did. Much searching, and I concluded I must have used it up in a spice mix, reused the container and forgotten to get more. I also didn't have green chilies, no idea about them, but nevermind.

Well, considering all the flavors in this dish, one or two instruments missing from the orchestra isn't a problem.

Here's the draining of the rice to save the water.

Here's the onions and various other items, tomatoes, spices, garlic, ginger, cardamom frying together

Then the addition of the stock and several processes later, here's the cooked rice.

Now in the fridge to warm up tomorrow and it smells good enough to warrant the labor.

Tomorrow is about the fish, now thawing in the fridge, marinating, cubing the halibut, frying in another selection of spices, before heaping on top of the hot rice to serve.  There will be a lot. 

Then I thought, after a lunch of Red Chowder(!) I thought I'd start on the blogpost.

Then the power and wifi went out. This triggered a visit from next door and a call from down the street, was it just them? No, it was out all over.

So part two of the day was walking then dozing over  a Sayers book on my Kindle, and generally keeping warm in a cooling and darkening house.  It was very quiet with no systems running. I could hear geese flying over.

Power came back in time to catch Textiles and Tea, about which more tomorrow. I'm a bit spent, low in spoons right now. 

But so far so good with the Bahreini dinner.

Change of plans

 I originally was going to make a lasagna for Handsome Son's monthly dinner-with-Mom event. Then, the noodles made and stored in the freezer, logistics intervened.

His free evening is Wednesday, and some of the lasagna ingredients are in my Misfits box which arrives Friday.  They've extended their range to include dairy and eggs as well as fish and meat. This is good, if it works, organic food at reduced prices, at the door, saves me a big shop as well as $$.

I do like to get out and shop for a few items, since for a single older lady, it's a chance to see other humans, always a good thing. But a longer list means more exposure and more waiting at the checkout, which I'd rather not do 

So I took advantage of the chance of ordering eggs and dairy in addition to the produce,and changed my Wednesday plans. When the ingredients arrive, I can make the lasagna and freeze it for a future dinner.

Meanwhile here's the new plan:

To learn to pronounce it, go to the Ottolenghi Test Kitchen YouTube channel. The cook starts with how to say it. It's a recipe from Bahrain, where she's from.

It's also, like a lot of Ottolenghi, quite a performance to produce. Many ingredients, many lovely spices. 

I don't have access to prawns, so it's going to be the rest of my Misfits shrimp, smaller but okay. And I will add in halibut, diced.

Today I started with a vegetable stock I made from my frozen bag of peelings from recent Misfits boxes. There's enough over for a future soup. And specially for this recipe, it included a stick of cinnamon. The house smelt very savory today.

Here's the fridge shelf getting ready for the Big Cooking Caper

Left to right, stock, measured ahead, ginger, almond slices, golden raisins, cooked baby Bella mushrooms.

Then on today's abbreviated shopping trip, the all important basmati rice base

So posh it comes with its own recipe sheet and philosophy of life.

Tomorrow I'll get the fish organized.

What this is about is,: rice with onions, garlic, tomatoes and various spices, with heavily spiced and marinated shrimp, and here halibut, heaped on top of it.

This includes a lot of my favorite things. And I suspect it will make plenty. It will involve a lot of the contents of my three, count them, spice shelves. Including whole cardamom pods, a big fave.

It's just not for the faint hearted. 

Meanwhile I'd run out of bread, while I was organizing this fancy exotic stuff. So  I  made a batch of walnut biscuits 

while I was hanging about in the kitchen trying to conclude that this Bahraini adventure was a good change of plan. Some biscuits went next door, hot from the oven.

Whatever comes of it, and I have had good results from Ottolenghi recipes, I can always quote my mom: it's all good ingredients!

Dessert, in case you wondered, is that dish of handmade chocolates you saw yesterday.

It's all good, even while I'm wondering why I am incapable of just planning a simple, easy dinner for handsome Son. Since it's only once a month, it's an event, I guess.