Good Eats
I think it's the coming of the fall that's maybe bringing out my urge to cook and bake. Or maybe i"m just sick of mass-made purchased food, whether from restaurants or cafes. I've eaten that 5 days a week for 4 years now. Even a homemade peanut butter jelly sammich tastes more flavorful than cafe food, no matter how overpriced the cafe.
This weekend I made raw puttanesca spaghetti. Plum tomatoes, olive oil infused with garlic, anchovies, capers, olives, herbs - OMG FUCKING DELICIOUS. It's 'raw' because you just stir those ingredients up and then you add spaghetti and it is divine with no boiling all the tomatoes to death. Hooray for whatever Italian putta first thought to smoosh all this stuff together. I smooshed it all by hand, and then I sat there licking my palm.
Then I baked a plum and whole-wheat-flour coffee cake. Really great with coffee - a bit dry and austere without. Coffe cake! They mean it!
I also made black forest ham and guyere souffle. I love separating egg whites from the yolk, and this one took seven eggs so it was Wonderful Gooey Finger Time all the while I was making it. Plus, I MADE SOUFFLE. It rose and got fluffy and everything. I felt like such a rockstar when it came out of the oven.
I have odd food fetishes - two in particular that seem to gross other people out. One: I love raw garlic. Raw garlic dipped in red pepper paste is better than most sex. Seriously. You sweat and cry and burn and it hurts so good. Two: I love Spanish green olives stuffed with pickled garlic with just about everything from pizza to chocolate cake to stir fried tofu to omlettes. Olives make everything better in the world.
I discovered a new one with the raw puttanesca -- ANCHOVIES.
I lurrrve them. I discovered a maker that packs anchovy filets in GARLIC INFUSED OLIVE OIL and I almost made a scene at the supermarket from my joy.
I am going to go out now to the market and get a basic flat ready-made tomato-sauce pizza for the oven, then add anchovies and garlic slivers on top and maybe shave my leftover bitter-in-just-the-right-way guyere over that and also add some extra tomatoes because tomatoes are of magic and awesome. And then I will lie down and die a happy woman.
Oh, gosh, and I'm also in the mood for some kind of baked brie fresh from the oven. WIth apricots maybe? And white wine. Oooh. Yeah.
Bye!