When in doubt, cook...

[desperance]

Depressed again today - or not depressed, really, just deeply fed up with almost everything. So of course I went shopping, in my favourite Asian foodstore.

And came home with giant prawns and baby aubergines, with coconut milk and lemongrass and tiny limes that you can eat whole like kumquats, and a sort of squash that might be an overgrown courgette/zucchini or it might be an undergrown marrow, or just possibly something else altogether.

Also with pasta made of rice and rice made of pasta, because nothing ever should be what it seems.

So, I shall make a kind of Thai curry with all those good things, and dish it up with macaroni-shaped rice pasta, which I have decided to call risimac. And we shall see what that's like.

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. If I lived nearer I'd invite myself round for dinner!

[desperance.livejournal.com]

See now, if you lived nearer you wouldn't need to invite yourself, you'd have a standing invitation... (thinks: where is this Everdon, anyway? *consults Wikipedia* Ah, Daventry! Actually, I think I knew that. And the shrunken village of Snorscombe - was it shrunk with all its villagers still inside it?)

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Heee, from now on, I shall always refer to it as 'the shrunken village of Snorscombe'. What an odd expression! Elsewhere on the interwebs it says there's a deserted hamlet there, but I only know of the mill, which is now a rather desirable residential property near what we refer to as 'pooh sticks bridge'.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I once had occasion to visit what I believe to be the true Pooh Sticks Bridge; it is at any rate v close to where Milne himself lived in Ashdown Forest (in the very house where Brian Jones would later drown in the swimming pool). Furthermore, I offer two items of evidence: (a) there is not a Pooh Stick to be had for miles around, the woods are entirely swept clean of fallen twigs; and (b) while we were there, a troop of smug children arrived with their own sticks, presumably pre-warned. And flung them in - and watched them sink, utterly unfloating. It was clear to me that the buoyancy of the water had been entirely worn away by generations of children playing Pooh Sticks...

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Heeee! I did not know buoyancy could be worn out. I have too much buoyancy (makes snorkelling difficult), so perhaps I could wear it out in some manner. Preferably a manner not involving generations of children.

[affinity8.livejournal.com]

just deeply fed up with almost everything

I can relate to that! Hope the cooking improves things :-)

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Really truly you can eat the limes? They aren't too bitter? Mmm...

*suffers lime envy*

*also Asian foodstore envy*

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Really truly. I didn't know, so I committed experimentation at lunchtime: quartered one and stir-fried it with lamb and green beans and noodles and such. Om-nom-nom, say I...

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Nom.

If I can find a goodish amount of what we used to call A Cheap Cut of Beef at a price that's less than a gallon of gasoline is here is Nashville these days, I intend to make further Experiments With Goulash (I'm too distracted to sort the diacriticals or I'd write that in proper Hungarian), and may even see if couscous can be subbed in for egg barley.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Coo. Let us know how that turns out... (You could certainly get a decent amount of cheap beef here for less than the cost of a gallon - but then, our gasoline has never been cheap.)

It was a Hungarian cookbook that told me that all ovens have three temperatures: cool, medium and hot. After that, they vary so much that there is no point in being precise. Which was a doctrine I signed up to with enthusiasm. Of course, a good oven thermometer would override that - but (a) few people have them and (b) few dishes need them. Cool, medium or hot will do for most things.