Cooking is more than just about eating

Tags

frittata, goat cheese, postaday2014, potatoes

I have found over the years that gardening, writing, baking and cooking have all become ways that I channel away my anxieties and angst. There are times when I don’t even know why I feel anxious, but I do and instead of wondering as to the why of it; I focus instead of using either gardening or cooking to physically work out those negative feelings before they take a hold of my psyche and it works for me.

Today since it was raining, I turned to my kitchen and decided to make a frittata with what I had in the pantry and the refrigerator. Onions, garlic and chives when it as usual, but this time I wanted to use up the baby red potatoes, so I diced them up to sauté them and I had a flash of inspiration, why not sauté the potatoes in duck fat that I had in the freezer, potatoes taste wonderfully when sautéed in duck fat, so they should be a tasty addition to my frittata. I added a nice helping of crumbled goat cheese because my son liked it so much in the last one that I had made and I put it in the oven and voila.

Later on tonight I will assemble the Vietnamese soup with all of the herbs; mint, scallions and cilantro chopped and the bean thread noodles, the shredded chicken and the tiny shrimp. The kitchen has smelled very comforting these past two days, tomorrow I may bake something such as an apple tart, I’ll see how I feel tomorrow morning.

Adventures in cooking for the vegetarian.

Tags

cheese mixture, cheese ravioli, cooking, funny part, goat cheese, homemade tomato sauce, postaday2012, roasted red peppers, vegetables

Yesterday as I was going through my newest cookbook “Vegetarian Cooking for everyday” I settled on a recipe that sounded very good and I also had most of the ingredients handy. It was a terrine of eggplant,zucchini,red pepper, ricotta,goat cheese, herbs and onion with a homemade tomato sauce. If it sounds like a lot of preparatory work, you would be correct. Though kitchen prepping never bothers me, this recipe took quite a bit of time, I wouldn’t recommend making this after work because you wouldn’t be eating for a good hour or so. The slicing of all the ingredients wasn’t that time-consuming, it was the sautéing of all the sliced vegetables separately that took the most time. After everything was ready, the layering of all the vegetables in individual ramekins, first the eggplant, then the zucchini, then the roasted red peppers followed by the cheese mixture, then the onions and topping off with the eggplant. The ramekins then go in a hot oven for 15 minutes and voila dinner is served. The funny part is that I cooked the recipe for the baby girl and since she had eaten cheese ravioli right after school, she wasn’t hungry for the small feast I had prepared for her. The hubby and I were very pleased with the results, the combination of the ricotta and goat cheese with the herbs really made the vegetables come alive. Tonight the baby girl will have it for dinner, I sure love the left over and technically she can’t consider it as a left over because she hadn’t had any yesterday.