Rain rain rain. Nonstop.
All day, all week, unrelenting.
I want it to END. Now.
During the torrential rains, I saw an intriguing recipe for a tomato-based lentil soup in the NYT that I decided to try. Nothing lifts your spirits during cold, damp weather like a nice bowl of hearty soup. I followed the recipe as written, except that I realized that I didn't have cumin, lemon or tomato paste, so used another spice and used tomato sauce instead of tomato paste. (Note to self: if you're trying an unusual version of a recipe, make sure you have all of the ingredients before starting recipe, instead of assuming that you have everything, simply because "they're staples". Duh.)
I seem to be eternally recipe-adherence-challenged. However, unlike bread, soup is much more forgiving.
The result was quite satisfying. Some of the lentils dissolved, making the soup heartier and more robust.
I liked the outcome, though as you can see from this picture, the soup--the hue, the consistency--looks nothing like the picture in the NYT.
The other comfort food I made along with the soup was upma--a savory cream of wheat with onions and peas and seasoned with various spices. I got the recipe from Patita a while back, and it has since become a regular part of my repertoire. It is soooooooooooooo easy to make and is yummy. It also gives me a good dose of iron to boot, which is a big plus, since I don't eat meat (unless it's prosciutto). I usually make a batch of upma and then eat it over the course of a week. It is good either cold or hot, which makes it a very versatile portable food item. It is the yellow thing in a bowl pictured above. Here is a closer look at it:
The brown flecks are udid dal. The dark green things are curry leaves, which I only recently have discovered (thanks to Patitia), but they have quickly risen to the status of "indispensable herb"; I keep some stored in my freezer for "emergency" uses. In addition to being useful in things like this and other Indian curries, it adds a lovely smoky flavor to toasted cashews.
So now that I have enough food to feed 10, I say let the rains come.
I'm now armed and ready for thee.
Winter is full-on here in Mountain View, and it has nothing to do with the storms that have been pounding us this past weekend. Here, the tell-tale sign that winter has arrived is that several of us at any given moment are baking bread-- or attempting to.
My bread-baking frequency is usually directly correlated to how much choir music I have to study; the 10-20 minutes of kneading time is a great time to study music. It makes me feel productive to both be able to bake bread and learn my music at the same time.
However, lately, I've been into trying no-knead bread. Version one was a 3-ingredient beer bread that was easy as pie. Version two was my attempt at combining Mark Bittman's no-knead bread recipe and another more recent version featured in the NYT. My brilliant idea to "average" the two recipes was my attempt to compensate for things like the lack of dutch oven and lack of measuring cup that measures to the one-eight of a cup (not to mention lack of apartment that stays 70 degrees for 18 hours straight). It turns out that when it comes to baking bread or things that involve exact measurements, averaging two recipes that call for totally different quantities of things doesn't really work.
Inspired by my downstairs neighbor's superior bread outcome, this time I set out to make the Cook's Illustrated version, "No-Knead Bread 2.0", vowing to follow directions. I tried the variation that called for Parmesan cheese, rosemary, and olives.
Due to my apartment's lack of proper insulation, I think it was too cold for the bread to properly rise. Here it is pre-baking:
And after it came out of the oven:
It came out a lot better than the last time. Not quite Tartine Bakery, but the crust actually came out resembling pictures in the Cook's Illustrated magazine this time.
I'm sure the addition of Parmesan cheese and rosemary and olives helped as well. As for the interior. . . taste-wise, I like it, but it is supposed to look more like this. Mine did not have nearly as many air holes: 
Still, this is an improvement from the last time. Then again, last time, I did not follow any directions, so perhaps this is nothing to write home about. :)
Well, air holes or not, it will be the perfect complement to the tortilla soup I have brewing on the stove as I write this.
Rain rain rain. Nonstop.
I liked the outcome, though as you can see from this picture, the soup--the hue, the consistency--looks nothing like the picture in the NYT.
The brown flecks are udid dal. The dark green things are curry leaves, which I only recently have discovered (thanks to Patitia), but they have quickly risen to the status of "indispensable herb"; I keep some stored in my freezer for "emergency" uses. In addition to being useful in things like this and other Indian curries, it adds a lovely smoky flavor to toasted cashews. 
