Kitchen diary, 28/09/13
Sep. 28th, 2013 06:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceDown to the farmers' market this morning, for the usual round of fruits and veggies - strawberries, raspberries, broccolini, fennel, kale, brussels sprouts, beetroots, Chinese beans, chocolate from the nice Vice lady* - and also to drop in at Leigh's bookstore, where she was hosting three local foodie writers. I hadn't really planned to come away with all three of their books, but we kind of did. I may have geeked out just a little, but I thoroughly approved of the pumpkin gingerbread samples, and the author of Suffering Succotash even got Karen to try okra, which I never have. Mostly, though, I wanted to talk about brewing: for I never have brewed, and really I ought to give beer a run for its money at least. And certainly if we're going to be drinking this many Dark & Stormies, I ought to be making ginger beer; and who knew what kombucha was, till now? Not I, at any rate. I may have a wilful ignorance...
Anyway, that was this morning, sort of down-scale foodie all the way. Then we went somewhere really nice for lunch: the Amber Cafe in Mountain View, a sort of down-scale brother to an up-scale local chain of Indian restaurants. The cafe is charmingly basic - order at the counter, take a number, find the formica-topped table of your choice - and the food is elegantly street: samosas and dosas and rotis and the like. I really liked it, and I want to go back often enough to eat through the menu. And maybe try one of the big-brother restaurants sometime.
And then we came home, and the most useful thing I've done all afternoon was to dig out one of the weary tomato plants and render it unto compost. I'm accumulating one big paper bag full of last fruits, with a red one in there to ripen them; and I feel kind of bad, as they are in fact still putting out flowers, so technically they could go on fruiting later yet; but I need to turn that bed over to winter veg, so out they must go.
Meanwhile there's a pot of Bolognese/ragu/meat sauce/spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove. Not quite my usual, as I have forgone the regular carrots and mushrooms in favour of celery and fennel, playing to that edge of the palate, or do I mean palette? But anyway: I'm going to chuck in a load of basil leaves, and serve the spaghetti with a kind of pesto too (technically a basil sauce that I made a few nights back to eat with pan-fried chicken breasts, but I see no reason not to repurpose it), and then I'll be done for the day. Apart from eating chocolate.
*Chocolate is too a vegetable. Or possibly a fruit. This is so obvious it's not even open to discussion. Besides which, you don't want to argue with the Vice lady. She's real.
Anyway, that was this morning, sort of down-scale foodie all the way. Then we went somewhere really nice for lunch: the Amber Cafe in Mountain View, a sort of down-scale brother to an up-scale local chain of Indian restaurants. The cafe is charmingly basic - order at the counter, take a number, find the formica-topped table of your choice - and the food is elegantly street: samosas and dosas and rotis and the like. I really liked it, and I want to go back often enough to eat through the menu. And maybe try one of the big-brother restaurants sometime.
And then we came home, and the most useful thing I've done all afternoon was to dig out one of the weary tomato plants and render it unto compost. I'm accumulating one big paper bag full of last fruits, with a red one in there to ripen them; and I feel kind of bad, as they are in fact still putting out flowers, so technically they could go on fruiting later yet; but I need to turn that bed over to winter veg, so out they must go.
Meanwhile there's a pot of Bolognese/ragu/meat sauce/spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove. Not quite my usual, as I have forgone the regular carrots and mushrooms in favour of celery and fennel, playing to that edge of the palate, or do I mean palette? But anyway: I'm going to chuck in a load of basil leaves, and serve the spaghetti with a kind of pesto too (technically a basil sauce that I made a few nights back to eat with pan-fried chicken breasts, but I see no reason not to repurpose it), and then I'll be done for the day. Apart from eating chocolate.
*Chocolate is too a vegetable. Or possibly a fruit. This is so obvious it's not even open to discussion. Besides which, you don't want to argue with the Vice lady. She's real.