Scotch eggs and other nested constructions

[flexagon]

Last night I made a dozen Scotch eggs, inspired by my new copy of Well Fed but not following its recipe. At the end of today's party, only these survived:



I'm counting that a success. A+, would cook again.

The party was a baby shower for dr_alycat, with a supercute but non-cheesy "baby monster" theme. It was the perfect time to say goodbye to the small blanket my grandmother recently gave me, but I had forgotten about hostess gifts. Accidental net gain: two houseplants, a small basket and a rather awesome-looking book called The Weird. Can't wait to read it; I like weird and I'm getting tired of nonfiction. :-)

After cleaning up from that, I skipped working out in favor of quietly menstruating on the couch. Next up: watching Serenity with heisenbug.



Posted via LjBeetle

Comments

[islenskr.livejournal.com]

Oooh, how do you like Well Fed? I keep waffling about buying it as there are quite a few reviews about how the recipes are just not worth it.

[flexagon]

I am liking it so far! I first heard about it from you (you loved a recipe from the blog, which I think is in the book), and my second experience has been the Scotch eggs. I deviated from her recipe only in not mixing in the sausage spices myself.

But of course we may differ. I'm not a foodie, I'm not a person who wants to spend a ton of time cooking, and I don't want complicated recipes. If I find an idea in a cookbook that's simple enough that after a couple of times I can memorize it, I consider that to be pretty great, and I LOVE it that these recipes don't seem overly familiar to me but do all fit on one page. Thus far I have one smashing success, and two spice mixes I plan to order from Penzey's.

The prep/cooking times seemed short to me until I read the pages at the beginning and realized the whole book is based around a) the idea that you will pre-prep a bunch of stuff on Sunday to cover the week and b) the idea that you will run your kitchen like a restaurant, do mise en place before starting, and not fuck around while cooking. Although a) will not become true for me anytime soon, b) is reasonable.

The one thing I'm hung up on is the use of "coconut aminos" in many recipes. Surely that's unfamiliar to many people, and it doesn't even appear in the index! I finally found it mentioned on page 22: similar to soy sauce, it says. Okay.

As with most cookbooks, this one really ought to be spiral-bound, and I plan to take it to Kinko's and make it so.

[rifmeister.livejournal.com]

Mostly agree with Rachel. I think it's a nice book, but my bar for cookbooks isn't that high. If you'd really rather get all the information by carefully reading the blog rather than buying the book, that would work too. A lot of the recipes are mix-and-match combos of "Cook a bunch of ground meat", "Cook a bunch of veggies", "Heat them together with some easy sauce."

I'm doing whole30/paleo and finding it a nice source of ideas.