Walking over to Back Alley Gourmet for lunch.
Railroad track along the side of Fingerle's lumber yard.
If they catch you walking on the tracks, they can give you a $75 ticket! (I was merely crossing them, which is permitted.)
I lunched with a friend who shares many of my arty interests. Knitting. Collage. Reading.
She, too, has begun drawing. She's being much more formal than I, and is happy with the colored-pencil class she's taking. She's enjoying the instruction, as well as the practice.
At present, I don't want anyone telling me anything. I just want to do what I want to do. Perhaps in the future I'll want to take drawing classes. Or maybe not.
It was nice to get caught up, and we had a good session of show & tell (drawing and collage).
I walked home from work. Most of the walk was dry pavement, slush, or fairly-easily-avoided puddles. I only found one nasty spot. Right after I crossed Huron, the hill down 7th toward Miller was icy. That scary wet-hard-ice kind of icy, rather than the slushy ice I'd experienced on most of the walk.
The slick surface, combined with the slope, was a bit nerve-wracking, but I was verrrrry careful, and made it safely past the seriously slick bits, and arrived home unscathed.
It's no fun to walk when you have to watch out for the safety of every step!
We had an adventurous supper. We had broccoli rabe, and risotto. None of us had knowingly eaten broccoli rabe before, and none of us had ever made risotto. The broccoli rabe got so-so reviews -- "a cross between broccoli and asparagus?"
The risotto was why you'd bother to be adventurous. It was delicious.
Many moons ago, I experienced multiple failed attempts at risotto by someone who was an adventurous but not-infrequently-unsuccessful cook. I was sure we could do better, but I knew it wasn't hard to mess up risotto......
With two of us attending to details of timing and stirring and straining and chopping, and with advice from the excellent Cook's Illustrated Best Recipe book, we were poised for success.
(Digression -- if you like to understand the whys and wherefores, Best Recipe is an excellent source of information. When they tried recipes, they tried lots of variations. They explain why they think you really *need* the wine in the recipe, and why they added just a touch of soy sauce to the mushroom-soaking solution. Fun to read. A super resource for thoughtful cooks. End of Digression)
We had leftover stock and chicken fat from the weekend's excellent chicken soup, and a package of exotic dried mushrooms (I'd read Alton Brown's recipe).
We followed the Best Recipe mushroom risotto recipe, mostly, with the rather large exception that we left out the fresh mushrooms. And we swapped in some chicken fat for some of the butter in which onion was sweated and rice was toasted. Oh -- and we put some garlic into the stock (etc.) in which the mushrooms rehydrated.
The result was lovely. Three thumbs up. We will surely make risotto again. Early and often.
(I note, bemusedly, that this erstwhile "peasant dish" is not all that cheap to produce. Dried exotic mushrooms and wine do not an inexpensive supper make......)
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2 comments:
I'm a BIG fan of brocolli rabe, or rapini as my mother called it. I love the bitter edge to it. Usually I just trim it up and saute it in a butter/olive oil combo with a bit of kosher salt. Maybe add a slice or two of garlic. Actually I like sauteed greens of all types. For the mushrooms, Costco sells a large container of dried wild mushrooms for about $8-$9. That's what I use for risotto, etc. Thanks for the hint about the soy sauce in the soaking water. Buon Appetito! JT
We generally just cook vegetables in water.
Thanks for the tip on sauteing. I will pass it along. :-)
Thanks also for the tip on Costco mushrooms! We are supposed to get a Costco in Ann Arbor, but they are not through the whole planning phase, let alone the ground-breaking phase, so it will be a while.
There are a couple of them within a 40-minute drive, but I've never made the excursion.
We eagerly await its opening here!
:-)
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