winter's comin' - news from the kitchen front

I know because even though the days are still t-shirt-warm, I have a hankering to make soup. Witness the Best Soup Ever.


Those vegies are actually all raw right now, they're waiting for the chickpeas to be done soaking. I've never cooked with dried beans (except lentils) before. The little clinking noises the chickpeas make against the edge of the bowl as they expand gives me the giggles.
I don't count lentils in the 'dried beans' category because they don't need soaking. I made a well wicked lentil cottage pie this week. And this week at the wholefoods store we bought dried cannelini beans. Not sure what they'll become yet. I have a hefty suspicion that I may end up shelling out for a piece of free-range speck, to make a speck-adulterated cannelini bean stew. For some reason the start of winter has me feeling like (not so bad as craving) pork.

I also stewed some rhubarb, as part of my plan to eat more seasonally.


Not so appetising, huh? Thing is, only green rhubarb was left at the markets. They say that green rhubarb is exactly the same as red, flavour-wise, but it just isn't going to look so pretty over ricotta (left over from a divine pumpkin, cauliflower, feta and ricotta cannelloni that Badly Coloured Boy and I fudged together between ourselves on Friday).

I also mixed some biscuit dough, and froze it in logs so I can slice it up and have just two warm cookies whenever I want. This recipe for double chocolate worked very well (I skipped the vanilla, because I didn't have any). The slices tend to shatter a little as you cut them (I think because I skimped on the butter a bit too), but can easily be pushed back together. Never again will we need the trans-fat laden supermarket logs of raw dough, which is quite a nice thought.