Wednesday, April 20, 2011

What's for dinner?

Once again, I failed to take any pictures of dinner, because as soon as the serving bowl hit the table, we both tucked in and had to be restrained and polite about splitting up the last bit that was our thirds.

Tonight I made the astounding Beggar's Pasta by Dorie Greenspan. It came together in under 20 minutes and was absolutely delicious! Also, it was surprisingly easy to modify: I used almonds in place of pistachios and figs in places of dates and it was still divine. I need to see if I can cut back on the butter a bit; feeding each of us over TWO TABLESPOONS of the stuff didn't do our cholesterol any favours.

Last night I made two dishes from Plenty: the shakshuka was good but rather less fabulous than last time, possibly because I couldn't find the saffron and possibly because I omitted most of the hot pepper to make it acceptable to my MIL. The leek fritters also suffered a bit from the lack of hotness, but were still amazingly yummy. Too bad they're also fairly unhealthy, between the butter in the batter and the amount of oil it takes to pan-fry them. Maybe a better frying pan would require me to use less oil?

I found another version of the leek fritter recipe that has been mostly adapted for US readers: the only missing measurements are that the parsley will be about 1.5 cups chopped and lightly filled, and the flour is a scant-cup. I added an extra teaspoon of baking powder to account for not having self-raising flour and that worked pretty well. Oh - and two ounces of butter is 1/2 stick. I accidentally used 3/4 of a stick (not sure what I was thinking there) and they did taste a little too "buttery."

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