Chufi

yeah, we should have one of those! when I first looked at your pic without reading the description, I thought it was a very weird looking stuffed aubergine So, it not only looked bad, it tasted bad too? did you eat it anyway? edited to add: I looked at the pic again and it's sort of growing on me. I also think the mint-joghurt tumeric thing looks good!

I was going to vote for Dutch cheese as well another current favorite of mine is St Marcellin. It comes in a little earthenware pot.. it stinks.. but the flavor is not very pungent. It's extremely creamy, when it's at the right stage of ripeness, with a runny interior. It has the most wonderful round and satisfying mouthfeel... I could use some, right now.

Lovely blog! such a wonderful balance between social events, showing us beautiful Vancouver, home cooking, dining out, exotic foods, food shopping, and domestic bliss. Thanks for sharing all those aspects of your life with us this week. And yes, I want to come to Vancouver now as well!

I know the feeling. But believe me, your food still looks awesome, mouthwatering, and delicious! You've got this pasta making down pat... Congrats! ← Thanks Susan! I really don't know why my pasta machine has been sitting in my cupboard for about 10 years. Making pasta is so much fun! I guess this high will wear off but I'll enjoy it while it lasts.. Tonight was cooking with leftovers. I had some leftover roast cod.. now cooked fish does not make the happiest of leftovers.. but I was still dreaming of those fabulous crushed potatoes I made yesterday. So I made fishcakes with the same flavorings: I added the cod to some plain mashed potatoes, and added chopped capers, anchovies and parsley. Formed into little cakes and fried in very hot oil. They were fantastic! The fact that the cod was roasted with orange zest made a very interesting flavor contribution.. they were so good I can see myself making these from scratch and not just with leftovers. With that we had a salad of roast peppers, olives and basil. edited 3 times because after 2 glasses of wine, my english gets bad

I used 200 grams of mushrooms, the white part of 1 fat leek, 1 shallot, 1 clove of garlic, a couple of pieces of dried porcini. About 1 tablespoon of parmesan was added after I blended the whole thing. The leeks, shallots, garlic and reconstituted porcini were sauteed in butter until soft. I dry-fried the mushrooms before adding them to the blender. Dry-frying mushrooms is my favorite way of treating them before adding them to any dish that calls for concentrated mushroom flavor: Put mushrooms (whole is best, but you can chop them up if you are in a hurry) in a large frying pan. They should be in a single layer. Don't add any fat. Put pan on high heat and fry the mushrooms over high heat until they are completely brown, collapsed, and wrinkled. Shake the pan occasianally (which is when you will hear that funny squeaky sound of the evaporating liquid). It's amazing how long they can take over high heat before burning. When they're done, they are dry - so you don't have to worry about the wet filling

OK, so I did the pressed leaf thing yesterday. I made a stuffing from mushrooms, dried porcini, and leeks. Pressed a tiny parsley leaf between two sheets of pasta to make the top sheet. Here's what they looked like raw (this pic was actually taken this morning of some of the leftover pasta, that's why it looks rather leathery) it looked beautiful, my husband said they were like fossils .It was quite fiddly to make them. You have to put little piles of filling on one sheet with the exact distance between them that the leaves on the other sheet have between them otherwise the leaves don't end up exactly on top of the stuffing. Anyway, it was a bit disappointing that when they were cooked, the visual effect sort of wore off : This was fun to do but not something you would do often I think. The stuffing, however, was one of the best sofar. Mmm porcini!!

Dinner with friends: more stuffed pasta. I'm hooked! This one has a mushroom/leek/dried porcini stuffing. With sage butter ofcourse. Citrus roast cod (with orange and lemon zest) with an almond crust, slow roast garlic tomatoes, green bean and radish salad. Not in the pic is the dish that was actually the best one of the main course: Gordon Ramsay's Nicoise potatoes - new potatoes crushed with olive oil, black olives, capers, parsley and anchovies. Pistachio cake with poached peaches and cardamom scented syrup I really hate that it's getting darker earlier every evening, and my dinner pics turn out all yellow and blurry!

Because there were chives in the stuffing, I think melted butter with snipped chives and lemon juice would have been nice. They look great though! My first guess would be that the dough had been around too long. But also, maybe you did not cook them long enough? I know fresh pasta does not need to cook very long but I have found that they always take longer than you think. I keep testing them while tey're cooking, because the amount of time they have to cook seems to vary a lot. But, far, far more addictive. I just made a batch with pressed parsley leaves for tonight's dinnerparty. Stay tuned...

Rice noodles with pork, black bean sauce, spring onions and red peppers. Topped with instant pickles (cucumber & radishes, sliced into matchsticks, tossed with salt, sugar and vinegar. Nothing special but it made a good "it's friday night let's have a bowl of noodles in front of the tv" kind of dinner.

The pic I saw in the magazine had very large ravioli, with a small basil leaf pressed into the top sheet of each one. Sounds like a very fiddly thing to get right though.

More stuffed pasta for the cook-off. Stuffing: mushrooms, ham, parsley and ricotta. Mmm.. Dessert: pureed mango layered with greek yoghurt. Because I love the combination of ginger and mango, I took some of my moms homemade ginger cake from the freezer to go with it.

happy belated birthday suzilightning and yes please do post pics of that dinner! Our dinner yesterday: I tossed some potatoes and carrots and red onion wedges with oil, rosemary and thyme and roasted them in a very hot oven until golden and lovely. I had a salad of frisee lettuce, smoked chicken, sundried tomatoes and chunks of soft goatscheese waiting.. but at the last moment, I fished the cheese from the salad, sprinkled it over the roast vegetables and put the pan under the grill.. very good idea! it looked very pretty too but the camera batteries were dead.

Yeah, our seventeen-person service staff was taking the week off for Labor Day, so our Swarovski crystal cheese bowl and serving shovel hadn't been cleaned and buffed. Thus: wax paper! ← hey, after making pasta, you already have enough washing up to do so I understand! btw.. my husband is having dinner with his colleagues tonight and while reading this thread, I feel a real "I need to make stuffed pasta" urge coming on. So I might just have a raviolosolo party tonight. Let's see what I have in the fridge to make a nice stuffing.. edited to add: ok, it is 'tonight' and I did have my pastasession. I needed an excuse to try out my cute little new round pastacutter . Seriously, this pastamaking is addictive! And I'm getting better at it each time I do it. I also make less and less mess every time. Although today, it did not help that I dropped a whole bottle of olive oil onto my stone kitchen floor in the midst of the pastamaking process Anyway, today's pasta: stuffed with chestnut-mushrooms, ham, parsley and ricotta, drizzled with basil tomato oil (that I made, fortunately, before I dropped the bottle). The pasta was delicious. I wanted a change from the sagebutter, hence the basil oil. However I think the flavor of the basil sort of overwhelmed the delicate flavor of the stuffing.. This one might be better with just a little ricotta, butter and parmesan. Because I had a lot of pasta left over, I decided to try something I once saw in a magazine: press leaves of basil between two pastasheets. I think the leaves I used were much too big, also you have to be very careful not to roll them out too quickly or they will tear (as you can see mine did). I think this might work best for some kind of open ravioli or lasagne, where you can get a good view of the pattern on the pastasheets. Has anyone ever tried this?

Chris, the fettucine look fantastic. And I love the way you serve your grated cheese..

I use Italian OO flour for fresh pasta, and I've read somewhere (although I don't remember where) that this has 7% protein, so I think you were right in choosing the 8% weak flour.

happened to me once. BIG mess . If you poke a couple of holes in it with a fork or toothpick, the steam can escape and it won't happen again.

Kristin, it's probably no consolation, but the finished pasta dish looks lovely. Although I expect it's not the kind of dish that you want to spend so many hours on, including blood and tears. Don't give up, try again! My first attempts were years ago, I always made a big mess and decided it just wasn't worth it, now I've made it a couple of times the past months and I finally feel I've got it. It really does take practice. I have the same machine you do, and in my previous house where the counter was too thick for the machine, I used to clamp it unto a very large cutting board that protruded slightly from the counter. Also, if you do clamp it on a table, put a dishcloth between the machine and the table to prevent damaging the table. Yes, I know that advice comes too late

Spinach tagliatelle with bacon, chestnut mushrooms, sage and parsley. A little bit of cream. When tossing the pasta with the sauce, I cracked an egg into it which made the sauce lovely and creamy. Lots of grated pecorino on top. Suateed zucchini and cherrytomatoes, left to cool, with tarragon and lemon juice as a side. Piece of chocolate for dessert.

that really is a beautiful picture. It got me thinking that I need more colored plates! It's really beautiful how the redness of the figs is echoed in the color of the plate. The figs & cheese made me think of this recipe by Delia Smith. Figs, gorgonzola, honey, but grilled, and with the addition of red wine vinegar.

Oh my goodness. I've never seen anything like this! Looks like you all are having so much fun.. feasting on incredible food.. thanks for sharing it with people far far away who never thought it was possible to see a pig in a bathtub

Corn and tarragon soup; Pumpkin gnocchi for the pasta/gnocchi cook-off, only they desintegrated into pumpkinporridge (but still, with sagebutter).; Salad of roast beetroot, yellow plumtomatoes and parsley. A large piece of white chocolate with hazelnuts to comfort me after the gnocchi debacle. I'll have some more of yesterdays' delicious cheese later.

well, the cook-off is not going so well over here in Amsterdam, either. Gnocchi ?? hell no! Gnocchi!! OK so I was all set for gnocchi today. I had bought potatoes, asking the potatoguy at the market for "not too floury not too waxy" ones. Then I saw the Kabocha squash I had bought a couple of days ago. I decided to make pumpkin/potato gnocchi. Potatoes were boiled in their skins, pumpkin roasted in the oven. Both were nice and dry when I mashed them. I decided to be brave and not add an egg.. only flour. I added enough flour to make a dough that was soft but not very sticky. Shaped the gnocchi.. I thought they looked very nice. Ofcourse the cooking was the hard part. I fished them out as soon as they floated to the surface, but by then they were almost dissolved. In the serving dish they collapsed together into an orange mealy mush. Sauced with enough sage butter to make an old shoe edible, we ate them anyway. But not a succes. What went wrong?

That's a lovely dinner Legourmet! Susan those clams look fantastic. And that bowl of pasta, so simple but so good. I can almost smell the balsamic vinegar.. It's funny because in our house, 'pasta in a bowl' usually means 'tvdinner' (which we don't do very often). The thought of eating that farfalle in front of the tv immediately popped into my mind! Anyway here's our dinner from today: grilled portobello-burgers, with balsamic red onions, slices of roast beetroot, and blue cheese mayo. On olive rolls (bought). Zucchini sauteed with thyme and lemonjuice. And afterwards this lovely cheeseplate: st. marcellin (lovely and runny and perfectly ripe), morbier, and a truffled goatscheese. With date/fig sourdough bread (from the market..) We drank one of the wines we brought back from Germany with the cheese, a 1995 Riesling Auslese, which is slightly sweet.. a very good match.

First, to everyone who asked for recipes: for some weird reason I'm not able to send PM's. I asked a question about it on the tech-forum and I hope it will be resolved. But now you know why the recipes are not coming your way yet. I'm sorry. As for the lentil pate, that one I can share because it's "my" recipe. But I'm afraid it isn't much of a recipe. I start by frying an onion and some garlic in olive oil. Then I add a couple of handfuls of lentils (any type, but ofcourse the tastier the lentil, the better the endresult will be). Add some water and boil until the lentils are done. I try to add just enough water for the lentils to absorb so you don't have to drain them. Then I add whatever is around.. I made a great one with panfried mushrooms once.. some chipotles in adobo are nice.. this one was made with a little bit of leftover tomatosauce and lots of capers. Rosemary is also good. Puree with the handblender, I like it when it still has some texture. I usually add a lump of butter or some oliveoil in the end, salt & pepper, and leave to cool (and set a bit) in the fridge. Anything goes!

That really is an amzing difference between those two pictures of the fort. I was thinking the same thing when I was taking my walk in the park this morning.. these are the weeks when everything suddenly changes so fast, and you have to say goodbye to summer. How beautiful the way your 2 pics evoke that slightly melancholy feeling. Like you I am a firm believer in fresh ingredients and "deciding what to do with what's around.." Allthough in my case, unfortunately, "what's around" never seems to stretch to such lovely mussles, corn, lobster or heirloom tomatoes. Thanks for sharing!