Comfort Food, Preparation. Tree Cutting,

Watching an ad for a food programme on TV where various chefs were stating what their comfort foods were, for instance, Nigella Lawson says hers is fish and chips. I then discussed with Matt what were our comfort foods. Matt reckons he doesn't have one, I think my only comfort food might be soup, and I'm not really sure about that. It is a fact that whenever I have been particularly ill, I have always been able to consume soup. And I know you have heard me rabbit on about Hot and Sour Soup. So then I wondered what your comfort foods might be. Do tell me in the comments section, I will be very interested to know.

Today, as I am sure everyone knows, I will be spending finalising the clearing out of our apartment in preparation for the pest control people on Tuesday. One of our friends is coming in to help us which is just as well, something has happened to my hip/leg over the weekend and I am having trouble walking let alone doing things like vacuuming which I can't do anyway. The majority of our knick knacks are on the balcony - lucky they haven't started doing ours yet, where on earth we would put stuff otherwise I cannot imagine.

Talking of balconies, I haven't been out front for a day or two but I hear they have already started cutting down trees to make way for all the machinery and scaffolding. What a tragedy. There are some gorgeous trees there.

This recipe is from the New York Times and made me think of my time in Spain when my parents lived there for a few years.

Spanish Tortilla With Tomato-Pepper Salad

 MELISSA CLARK
YIELD 4 servings

A Spanish potato tortilla is an egg dish unlike any other. It doesn't resemble the French omelet, which is loose and wobbly. Nor is quite like an Italian frittata, which is puffy and custardy. Instead, a tortilla is a solid cake with just enough egg to bind the soft, sliced potatoes.

The first step to making it is to gently cook sliced potatoes and onions in plenty of olive oil. And plenty means at least a cup, or maybe two. It sounds like a lot but most of it stays in the pan (and you can reuse it). Other than adding great flavor, the oil turns the potatoes velvety and luscious. Just make sure the heat is low enough so the potatoes and onions cook but don’t brown very much, though a few darkened spots are okay.

In Spain, a tortilla is a tapas staple nibbles with drinks. But it’s also delightful for brunch, dinner or

lunch, served either warm or at room temperature.


INGREDIENTS
5 medium Yukon gold potatoes (1 1/4 pounds)
1 white onion, diced
1 ¾ teaspoons kosher salt, more as needed
¾ teaspoon black pepper, more as needed
About 1 1/2 cups extra-virgin olive oil
6 large eggs
¾ cup halved cherry or grape tomatoes
⅓ cup diced Italian frying pepper(also called Cubanelle), or green bell pepper
¼ cup sliced scallion, white and green parts
1 garlic clove, minced

PREPARATION
Peel potatoes and halve them lengthwise. Thinly slice them crosswise. Pat potatoes dry with a dish towel or paper towels. Toss potatoes with onion, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper.
Place a large skillet over medium heat and warm through. Add oil, then add potatoes and onion. (You need enough oil to almost cover the potatoes, so adjust amount according to your pan size.) Cook until potatoes are just tender enough to cut with a fork, 10 to 15 minutes, adjusting heat so vegetables do not burn or take on too much color. Using a slotted spoon, transfer potatoes and onions to a colander set over a bowl and let cool. Reserve 3 1/2 tablespoons oil from the skillet to use for finishing the recipe. (You can reuse the rest of the remaining oil, too; store it in the refrigerator.)
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Heat 2 tablespoons of the reserved oil in an oven-safe 8- to 9-inch nonstick skillet over medium-low heat. In a large bowl, whisk eggs and season with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Stir potato mixture into eggs. Pour mixture into pan and use a spatula to flatten out surface. Cook, using spatula to occasionally loosen eggs from edges of pan, until top is almost set, with just a small amount of liquid remaining, about 5 minutes. Transfer to oven and cook until top is just set, 5 to 7 minutes longer. Slide tortilla onto a plate.
In a large bowl, toss together tomato, pepper, scallion, garlic and remaining 1 1/2 tablespoons oil. Season with salt and pepper. Top tortilla with salad and serve warm or at room temperature.

Have a great day

 

Pumpkin, Cleaner and Comfort Food.

Wednesday I managed, with difficulty, to saw the top and bottom off the pumpkin. Then I couldn’t get any further. Bit later Matt had a go and couldn’t get anywhere with it either, tried all kinds of cutting implements and saws, but no good. Ended up throwing it away and Matt went to the store and got me some canned pumpkin. They did have some in our local store after all. I have never used canned pumpkin before, but I think I will be doing so in the future; fighting with a pumpkin apparently made of cement just isn’t worth it. I have never known such a tough pumpkin before, how anyone manages to carve one of these things I don’t know. It’s always been a tough job, but previously we have managed to cut one up and cook it. Anyway, I have lots of soup in the freezer (made some tomato soup whilst I was at it, particularly as the basil is still growing strong) so I guess the freezer is a tad full. I have also run out of storage containers too. Matt is always complaining we have too many. We do?? Not one soup sized container left.

Bit of a problem, apparently our cleaning lady is sick. Don’t know what with and when she will be able to come in. Meanwhile we have dinner guests on Saturday so I guess between us we will have to clean the place up a bit. Neither of us are much up to cleaning unfortunately. Too many aches and pains. At least Matt can manage to run the vacuum and I can flit around with a duster LOL. Flit, I should be so lucky.

Tina, at Life is Good was talking about comfort food in her last blog. Discussing it with Matt, we really don’t know comfort food. Possibly I might choose soup as a comfort food of sorts, chicken anyway, especially the Jewish variety. I am not really quite sure what comfort food is – something one’s mother cooked? If so, my mother was an outstanding gourmet cook and we rarely had repeats.  Other than that we both like most foods and what we want to eat depends on the moment, what is at hand, or what we have planned. We eat such a range of foods, I could never pick out one I consider to be comfort food. I’ve said it before though, I don’t like reduced fat foods or low sugar foods. I like my food to be fresh and normal and NOT messed with. If it is very high fat or high sugar I will decrease my intake accordingly,  Having said that, it’s just occurred to me, I have skim milk on my cereal, something I have been doing for around 40 years. Just got so used to I don’t normally think about it.

I saw this picture and couldn’t resist sharing although in fact this is more about decorating for Hallowe’en than actually cooking. if you go to the Food.com website you will have access to all the other cupcakes suggested below. There are a lot of instructions, but you can just pick one or two ideas.

Mummys  Monsters and Spiders Oh My! Cupcakes

By momaphet

Photo by momaphet
Note:
I'm posting this to share decorating ideas. Mine are far from decorating perfection but oh, so fun to make and eat. Decorating like this takes time – you are warned - but well worth the effort! You can make it much simpler by only make one or two designs. These were a huge hit at our work Halloween party and kids love them! Use your favourite cake and frosting recipes, your frosting must be soft enough to squeeze through a cone and tip but firm enough to hold it's shape. My frosting was a basic buttercream with a little egg white added for firmness - egg white powder will work too. The bright blue frosting lost some of it's shape due to mixing powdered food coloring with extra milk to avoid grainyness, this is one reason I suggest using gel or paste food color. I went through the bulk candy section at the grocery store and picked out the items I thought most conducive to monsters and such - the assorted liquorice candies are fabulous and slice up easily; sour strips make great tongues : ) , and I loved the yellow Runts for making horns and fangs! I had mini baking M&M 's on hand; they were a good size for eyes, but regular ones could work too. I was looking for the skinny string liquorice but couldn't find any - it would be a nice addition as is edible glitter - Wilton makes it and you can find it at JoAnne's or Michael's, or where ever you buy your cake decorating supplies For frosting Decorating Tips - I used open star #18, plain round #7, a #68 leaf tip, Atteco 47 or 45 for the mummy, and a Wilton or Marpol 233/ Atteco 133 for the grass and some of the monsters . You may have similar tips but slightly different sizes. I make my own parchment cones, unless you do a lot of decorating and make your own to save money, it's much easier to buy the nice plastic bag cones. I always use couplers so I can change tips but you could make separate cones for each tip. The Mummy and Worm Cupcakes are the easiest and take the least amount of time to make. The spiders are the messiest and most time consuming. If I were to do this assortment again I would prep for the decorating ahead of time - slicing liquorice candies for eyes, cutting sour tongues, dipping the spiders etc., and bake the cupcakes the day before. Doing everything at once took hours.

Ingredients:

Yield 24

• 24 cupcakes, baked
• 4 cups buttercream frosting (The frosting amount is approximate always be prepared to make more, See note below)
• food coloring, gel type preferred

Directions:

1. Separate your frosting, and color as desired, place a damp paper towel over your bowls of frosting, this keeps a crust from forming which can clog your decorating tips.
   
2. MONSTER CUPCAKES - let your imagination run wild!
   
3. Runts.
   
4. Liquorice Candy.
   
5. Sour Strips.
   
6. Assorted Coloured frosting Frosting.
   
7. For fur/ skin fill a cone with frosting and tip of choice for the type of fur you want (see intro for #'s) - I used : green monster - star tip , white monster - round tip , teal blue - leaf tip , bright blue - grass tip . For the white fangs on the green monster I used the round tip squeezed a little frosting then pulled away to make the fang.
   
8. Top with candies for eyes, tongues, fangs etc.
   
9. WORMS CUPCAKES.
   
10. Gummy Worms.
    
11. Chocolate wafer cookies.
    
12. Frost the cupcake ( I added cocoa to my butter cream just for these to start with a brown base). Crush a couple of Oreos, or other cookies without the cream, for the dirt, insert the worms, then added grass around the edges (Tip # 233) and a couple of flowers. I found it hard to get some of worms in whole, so cut them down before inserting. Another fun addition is to create tombstones or ghosts with vanilla finger cookies.
    
13. MUMMY CUPCAKES.
    
14. Use a touch of frosting to put your mini M & M eyes in place.
    
15. Use Tip 47 (ridges down) to create bands of white frosting for the mummy wraps, overlap and curve them a bit - mummy's aren't flat or symmetrical. Leave a tiny gap for a smile. Once frosted I used a dot of black gel food color for the pupils on the eyes.
    
16. SPIDER CUPCAKES.
    
17. Chow Mein Noodles.
    
18. Chocolate, Melted with a little shortening.
    
19. Mini M & M's.
    
20. Black gel, melted chocolate or black food coloring (for the spider's web.
    
21. Black edible glitter.
    
22. Dip small clusters of the noodles in chocolate - a fork helps, place on waxed paper, dip individual legs and poke into the cluster; add red m&m eyes. Make ahead and let them completely firm - you may need to pop them into the fridge. Make extras in case of breakage.
    
23. Frost the cupcakes white, then to create the web, using black gel frosting from the store, or a small cone with melted chocolate (I dipped a tooth pick into my black gel food coloring) starting from the center make three thin concentric circles on top of the cupcake; take a thin knife or tooth pick and starting from the center to the outer edge drag through the circles spacing the drags about 1/3" - 1/2" apart. (You could also use chocolate icing and pipe with white glaze) . Sprinkle black edible glitter around the edges. Top the web with your chocolate chow mein spider. If any legs fall off, a little dab of melted chocolate will glue them back into place.
    
24. NOTE:.
    
25. A little egg white or egg white powder added to your frosting can give it a little extra firmness to hold piped shapes better.
    

Have a great day.