The Kitchen Sink.

Kitchen events in the last month have been interesting with Angelata and myself (Mannie) working together and the combinations have been excellent. We have some exciting new ingredients found at Bigsplat's new deli/cafe which shall hereafter be known as Bigsplat Cafe (for there's no point bothering with any of the other cafes in Bigsplat so they're hardly likely to come up in conversation with you, dear reader.
(I use the singular advisedly.)

The new stuff from Bigsplat Cafe;

1. dried cranberries

I'd always thought the cranberry a bit of a one trick pony, but I was mistaken. The dried cranberry is fabulous. We've made a three bowl slice that turned out well. Don't ask for measurements, we don't use them. We hate them.

Bowl 1. It was half and half buckwheat flour and plain wholemeal flour, rubbed with nuttelex until it reached breadcrumb texture and some sugar (not much, we don't like things sweet)
Bowl 2. Was three little bantam eggs (so you know, two eggs I guess - basically an egg per cup of flour is the ratio we tend to use) and enough soy milk, beaten. Vanilla.
Bowl 3. Chopped brazil nuts, chopped chocolate and the lovely DRIED cranberries (about 2/3 cups all up)
Then bowl 2 was poured into bowl 1 and mixed.

The mixture was poured into a large rectangular baking tray that we lined with paper as we do.

Then we pushed the contents of bowl 3 into the mix and baked for 40 minutes at 180 degrees.

2. dried porcini mushrooms

I love these. Angelata persuaded me - at first I thought it all rather suspect, and SO EXPENSIVE, but see, you really don't need much to give your ordinary mushrooms so much more MUSHROOM in their character.

We made a mushroom sauce with them.

We soaked three slices of them in 2/3 cup of rainwater overnight. Then we chopped the porcini mushrooms into soggy little slivers (keeping the liquid which is a kind of soy sauce colour), and added them to ordinary fresh sliced mushrooms, and made our mushroom sauce the usual way (liquid of some kind, often milk, added to cornflour & very finely chopped or smashed garlic that has been sauteed for a minute in butter/whatever vegan nonsense is being used)
only this time we used the liquid of the porcini, and it was very delicious though we did add some milk (soy, *sigh*, pesky damn vegans) for purely cosmetic reasons because people like caramel brown sauces rather than inky black sauces I have found.

3. the most beautiful lentils in the world

I don't know what they are. They are gorgeous. They are grey/green and tiny. And they are the most delicious and attractive lentil I've ever met. So good they could be served alone, with a little olive oil, chopped flat leaf parsley and smashed garlic (if you like garlic).

We made a vegan shephard's pie out of them, and it was actually all right. It would have been better if I'd been allowed to put a great dollop of lamb mince in it like I wanted to, but it wasn't bad.

I can't remember how it went. Roast parsnip was involved.

Other than that we've been roasting stuff a lot (especially beetroot) as it's been chilly.
We went away for a night and I made a terrible chicken curry and I'm still feeling mortified by the experience. Sometime the Weedle Thrift gives me such bad advice.

I wish you could come and have a cup of tea with me. I'm about to make a pot of Orange Pekoe.

See you next time.

Mannie (Miss Moodle, for long)