Mirthful's Comestibles

Or our Bosch, I guess, as it was a Christmas present for us both. I commented when I opened the present that it was a new toy for me, whereupon my mil, who gave it to us, questioned whether the husband hadn’t had it on his list for his birthday this summer, too? Well, yes, he did. Because I wanted one and he couldn’t think of anything else to ask for. Anyway, I’ve used it twice for baking already and he’s certainly eating the results with gusto, so I guess he’s reaping the benefits too.

And I love it. I like baking, but in a very lazy and somewhat haphazard way. I don’t find satisfaction in kneading for hours (or even minutes). So a machine that really works well at doing the job for me is a dream.

So there it is. A MUM6N22 Universal Plus. With blender and meat mincer. Swoon.

And I couldn't even get it in focus...

And for my birthday I want the sausage thingymabob, then we can really go crazy in the kitchen. And the pasta maker. In fact, all the extra equipment, of which there is a lot.

Oooh. Lookie. All shiny.

Anyway. For some reason I had not anticipated such a bulky and expensive gift and had therefore not stocked up on baking ingredients before the Christmas holidays (we had no eggs, very little milk and hardly any flour other than some of the plain stuff). So the first thing we made (we… well, the lass helped, sort of) were sausage rolls, as we happened to have everything we needed. We tried this recipe, and used some of the odd sausages we picked up in Riga before Christmas. In addition to the sausages I stuck some sticks of cheese in there as well. The sausage rolls turned out really tasty, the sausages, luckily, were just right for this sort of thing. I’ve thrown some in the freezer and gobbled up most of the rest… We will be making them again, though with different sausages, I suspect. Going to Riga regularly in order to shop would not be very economical.

So, what are these?

After some stocking up, though as it turned out I needen’t have, really, I searched my Delicious bookmarks tagged recipes for some more ideas and found A Spoonful of Sugars Pan de Ramirino recipe. Not having stocked up on fresh rosemary, I used the dried, which worked surprisingly well. I also used the Bosch for the whole shebang, except the shaping of the buns. To persuade it to work in the olive oil rather than just swirl the oily dough round and round I had to cheat and add a little more flour. Next time I think I’ll just leave some out at the beginning for this purpose. My buns turned out rather more ragged than Angelas, but they tasted juuuuust fine. Another recipe that will quite definitely be repeated, and possibly in larger batches, as I supect these will freeze well enough, too.

The lass seems to have inherited my love of all things pasta, and when it’s just the two of us for dinner (whenever himself works a late shift), we frequently end up with tortellini and sauce of some sort. I buy the fresh tortellini, as one pack is pretty much a perfect serving for the two of us, and try to stock up when we’re in Sweden, as the variety there is much greater than here (I just checked the Fjordland site and the choice is tortellini with meat or hamand cheese or ravioli with cheese or pesto). Most importantly, with a child that only erradically (at best) eats vegetables, they have several varieties containing greenstuffs. So we stock up and fill the freezer, and when I get home after having picked the lass up from daycare I put on a pot of water and grab a pack and throw them in while still frozen. Quite possibly I shouldn’t, but they seem to taste fine and I never remember to take a pack out in the morning for defrosting, so there it is.

And then the sauce. If there is pesto in the fridge, that’s what we have. Quick and easy. Sometimes I throw a handful of broccoli bouquets in the water with the pasta. In that case I tend to mash one or two in the pesto, to sneak some vitamins into the lass’ portion.

Today there was no pesto. What to do? Well, there were two jars of feta (or, rather, “gjeta”, as it’s not Greek, but Norwegian, purchased at the farmer’s market on Saturday), so I scooped in a few cubes and a bit of the marinade, and I threw an egg in there, too, for good measure. Perfect! The cheese melted slightly, and with the congealed egg and the herby marinade it covered the pasta and broccoli beautifully. A grating of cheese on top – in this case organic cheddar from Rafnklau – and a little freshly ground black pepper and the lass was blissfully happy, and so was I.

We need a picture, don’t we?