Kitty Corner

There's one particular cooking blog I like to read.  Interesting chat about the recipes (or cookbook being discussed), beautiful pictures, and good recipes.  We particularly like the lentil soup recipe she had posted recently.  Yum.

Having had success with a couple of her recipes, and drooled over several more, I decided last night to make her Thai-spiced pumpkin soup.  To quote: "No worries though, this is a soup that might very well be impossible to screw up."

Any alarm bells ringing yet?

It actually turned out not bad, as experiments go.  I added a heaping teaspoon of Thai Kitchen curry paste, which turned out to be a half a teaspoon too much.  Flavour was too intense, and heat was on the high side of enjoyable.  Had it over the lamb and cheese meatballs referred to earlier, and shockingly the (very strong) flavours of both foods went quite well!  rpm45 liked it (the soup by itself, that is.  He shook his head over my meatball combination *g*), and he's not a huge fan of pumpkin in general.  That said, neither of us would make it again as written.  Maybe throw pumpkin in a Thai curry stirfry, though... Hmmmm... :)

As a note, while I found 1.5 teaspoons of curry paste too much (and a scant teaspoon of salt, which again was a little generous for our tastes), the blogger used six (6) teaspoons of curry paste and 2 teaspoons of salt!!! (though for fairness' sake, she did say her curry paste wasn't terribly spicy... but we even found the _flavour_ overwhelming at the level we used!)

Well, the pumpkin seeds toasted really nicely, and I still have the other half of the pumpkin (cooked and scraped) to play with.  And we now have an idea for varying our Thai curries. :)

I have finally joined the world of bloggers. How long this will last, I know not, but it will serve as a good studying break. *g*

Food.  :)

Just finished baking squash in preparation for making winter squash pilaf.  Well, technically "Pumpkin Basmati Rice Pilaf" but there is no pumpkin to be had, so I'm using butternut squash.  To be eaten with Black-Eyed Pea and Quinoa Croquettes, made with chick peas because I can't find black-eyed peas.  See a theme here? *g*

We've decided to try vegetarian Fridays this Lent.  Not fishitarian - vegetarian.  Not vegan, though we are trying to limit our use of dairy and eggs.  Promises to be interesting!  At least we have a couple of vegetarian friends who are happy to share recipes, and the book from which the pilaf recipe came, given by a friend who knows me far too well and gave me a cookbook for Christmas. :-P  "The Ethical Gourmet" by Jay Weinstein.

I'm enjoying the renewed energy and motivation that comes from having had a month off, and now a real goal to work toward.  Expect lots of cooking experiments in the next few weeks!

Also much rambling. *wry grin*

I have to mention this.  One of the Google ads on the side of the screen as I write this is from shopping.yahoo.com.  It's obviously one of the "take a random interest and plug it into the formula" ads, because the text reads: "Compare Low Prices.  Shop Online and Find Great Deals on Brand Name Microbiology."

Yep.

Anyhow, I shall sign off for the night.  Probably post tomorrow after making/eating the pilaf and croquettes.