Saturday 18 December 2010

Testing!

After all this moving, traveling and being ill, I felt like I needed to get back on the cooking track. I was stuck in such a horrible food rut in the last few weeks!

So I was happy to hear that I can test some recipes for The Urban Vegan's new cookbook. I'm working on the presentation as my new flat has a limited selection of dishes, especially bowls.

I barely ever use plates, as 80% of my everyday cooking is either Asian -hard to rice with chopsticks from a plate, soupy or some sort of pasta with lots of sauce, which is also easier to eat from a very deep plate or bowl. I adore French breakfast 'bols', too! Anyway, I need to invest in some pretty donburi-able and ramen-able bowls. Are you a bowl or a plate person?

The first recipe I tried was Farfalle with Shallots and Chard. Dynise is right when she says shallots are often very under-appreciated. You can get them easily enough in the UK, but if you go into a big supermarket in a French-speaking country, the variety of shallots (and all other allium brothers) will blow you away!
This was a very basic dish but the shallots gave it a wonderfully deep aroma!


Tonight we had 'a lot' of snow in London. That is, about 2 inches, but it sufficed to create an utter chaos. I had the final handover for my old flat today, and it took my 3hrs to get home -normally they journey would take 30minutes- after that because the public transport was totally fucked and there also were powercuts on the tube. It's not much fun sitting in a dark tunnel somewhere below Kings' Cross for an hour with no way out! I hope the situation improves, as I'll have to take the train to work on Monday.

So when I finally got home, I started up this nice Humble and Hearty Vegetable Soup. I just adore chewy barley in soups! I'll try to get some new bowls for the next pictures, and maybe sunlight, too!

2 comments:

Vic Robinson said...

Well, those two look great! :0

Shaheen said...

Thank you so much for coming by my blog. I always enjoy meeting other bloggers.

Your right to point out the shallots are underused, I also think barley has gone out of fashion. Your last bowl is just what I'd appreciate on this nippy cold and snowy evening.

PS I am a bowl person :)