Housewarming

Well I'm finally back in the land of Internet!

It's been odd to cook things and take pictures but not to share it...

A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks that we have lived here. Good and bad. In no particular order:

the toilet would clog

discovered that my oven rocks

my magnet hooks kept falling with the weight of my Living Kitchen colander

this place is so big sometimes I feel like I'm wearing somebody else's shoes

our shower decided to stop working, for 5 straight days

a frigid winter and a cold apartment = retail therapy in buying a robe and two sets of pajamas

happiness can be found in a pie dish

I've been drinking too much Pepsi

So, though life hasn't been perfect, it hasn't been that bad either. The kitchen has proven to be my haven, my retreat. I have cooked more than I expected I would, and I think it's a nice introduction to a new space. There's still a lot I need to get used to, and I have to remember where I put things, but I am looking forward to more happy moments in the kitchen.

Last weekend, my friend, Rosemary, came for some dessert, as I mentioned previously. I made Nigella's Apple Crumble from How to Eat. I knew that Fabien, Rosemary's beau, loves apples, so I thought it'd be a special treat for all of us.

It is an easy peasy recipe and was indeed well received. Delicious.

A friend at work said to me that a housewarming is just that... a way to make your house feel warm, feel loved, feel like a home. Having friends and my family over certainly did help.

Rafa was away in Florida at the time, and I thought that a nice 'welcome back' meal would be his favorite, shepherd's pie. I've made versions of this, using ground beef, of course. Some of you may remember that during my Cupboard Love project, I was not able to find ground lamb anywhere. But, with this new address comes supermarket delivery - a supermarket that stocks ground lamb. I was so excited to give Tom N-D's recipe a try from Just like Mother Used to Make. {As an aside: My landlord was over one night to have a look at the shower and saw the book on the countertop; he thought it was a baby-making book. LOL.}

So, back to the pie, it's fairly simple to make as well. You chop up some onions, garlic, leeks and carrots. (I omitted the celery -- bleuch!) Separately, you fry up the ground lamb until cooked



through. Since lamb gives off a lot of fat, you drain the meat and set aside. Then, you use the juices and oil to fry the vegetables. The lamb is added back along with tomato paste, Worcestershire sauce and a bay leaf. Once that simmers for a while, you put it into a pie dish and top it with creamy mash. And then you bake.


Mmmmmmm. I am not a fan of minced anything but I was SOOOO impressed with this dish. It popped with flavor - totally awesome. Rafa loved it; I was chuffed.

Check out the next post to see what I meant by how happiness can be found in a pie dish.

The Virtuous, and the not so much...

So, I made fruit salad....

and then I made chocolate muffins...

I guess I cancelled out any good eating for the day... but the plus is I did get to use ingredients in the fridge again. Really powering through.

The salad, obviously, is a variation of Nigella's Antioxidant Fruit Salad. Hers has pomegranate seeds, mango cubes and blueberries with a spritz of lime. I have made it in the past, when it was on the At My Table column, and it was marvelous!! I mean really, really good. And I'm not a fruit eater -- which explains why I have fruit in the fridge days after buying it. Since certain things aren't in season now, my fruit salad has the pomegranate seeds with oranges, granny smith apples, blackberries and spritz of orange and lime juice. Equally fab, but later, I was in the mood for chocolate.

Unsurprisingly, my muffins are also a variation of Nigella's recipe for Chocolate Chocolate-Chip Muffins. I find it funny that even though I have a fridge loaded with ingredients, I can't ever get the exact combination for any recipe. It's like I'm forced to go a different way. Well my variation is actually quite a funny story.

Two summers ago (yes, I know, that was a long time ago!), I bought chocolate chips that had a peanut butter swirl in them. At that time, they were a new product from Nestle and I bought two packages on sale. I believe I must have walked home that day, because I discovered that the chips completed melted in their packages. Their chip-ness qualities were completely gone. They were just blocks of melted chocolate and peanut butter. So in the fridge they stayed, for almost two years!!

I wasn't going to transport these to the new place, so I figured I needed to use them up. The chocolate was still good, because months ago I opened up one of the packages, and since then have gnawed at the block whenever I needed a chocolate fix.

So, I thought for the muffins, I'd chip-ify them again. Bring them back to their original glory. Um, that didn't work. I hacked at the block with the mezzaluna, and instead, I got part rubble/part chunky shards. I was halfway through the recipe so there was no point in turning back now. So, I added the chocolate display to the dry ingredients and proceeded with the rest of the recipe. I didn't bother to save any for sprinkling on top, because they were so pulverized, they would melt into the muffins anyway.

Well, as you could see above, the muffins turned out just fine. Better than fine, delicious! The sponge itself had hints of peanut-butteriness, and there were still visible chips within. Really lovely muffins.

I'm not sure what I accomplished by making these muffins, because even though I did use up the next to last egg, milk, flour, etc., I now have 10 muffins in the freezer. I thought I was supposed to be clearing out the freezer and fridge. Hmmmmn. Well, that was the most delicious exercise in futility I have ever partaken (partook) in. Lovely.