hem|mungen

Follow-through

In answer to a recent *nudge* to finish what I started, here's an update on the previously mentioned project to expand our daily menu.

(An aside: this might be a little fuzzy-sounding, since I finally broke down and took some allergy meds today. Springtime is upon us here in Seattle and my body is adjusting to brand-new allergens. If you'd like to see some truly spectacular images of said allergens, check out these pics on Flickr. The link will take you to images of cherry trees in bloom on UW's campus. These trees, along with the plum and apricot trees which have been in bloom for several weeks now, make everything seem prettier. Even in the rain.)

Alrighty. I have three food items to report upon. One success was some properly-made polenta with garlicky vegetables on top. Polenta is one of those things that I've always felt I should embrace as a standard of vegetarian cuisine circa Diet For a Small Planet, but I never liked how it came out when I made it. Turns out that the right grind of cornmeal--medium--makes all the difference (duh). It was marvelous, smooth but with lots of body and not at all gluey. The next day we cubed it up, fried it, and added it to a quick, paprika-spiked tomato soup like little corn dumplings. It was fantastic in both iterations. So: Polenta is now in the weekday meal lineup.

Probably the big winner of this week of experimentation was the recipe for slow-cooked white beans from Cook's. Mercy! those are some good beans. We'd had them made for us once by some greatly-missed friends, and I've been meaning to make them myself ever since. I've made the cheater's variation using canned beans (lame!). But these, with the onion halves and carrot pieces and Whole Garlic Bulb, well, they take the cake. And best of all, the recipe makes about a gazillion servings, so you can just freeze the leftovers. Should you have any.

The least successful venture of the week was the socca, which I did finally get around to making and which was supposed to be the starch with those white beans. It wasn't a major failure, but our recipe called for baking it in a 10-inch skillet when really it needed to be cooked on the stovetop like a crepe and then maybe finished quickly in the oven. It's only garbanzo flour, salt, and water, so there's not a whole lot to hold it together. The bits that cooked properly were really yummy, though, so socca is definitely on the rotation, if somewhere near the bottom. Just need to perfect the method.

That's all for now. The project continues, though, so I'll post updates as they seem relevant.