2801

I baked two loaves of Dutch Crunch (or Tiger) bread and just had my first slice. It is goooooooood.

2802

Just wanted to say thanks for posting this. I’ve had a weird laziness to making my own sauce, but I bookmarked this just in case. I make pizza dough pretty regularly and the local store had 28oz cans of tomatoes on sale so I figured what the heck. Turned out great. I feel silly not trying it or hearing about it sooner.

2803

Not so much cooking involved, but yesterday we had the season’s first serving of Rakfisk. Smells like hell, tastes like heaven!

800px-Rakfisk.jpg800×600

2804

How different is that from gravlax? I adore gravlax, but have never had rakfisk.

2805

Gravlax is much milder, Rakfisk smells bad. Like, really bad but the taste is like a tangier Gravlax.

2806

When you say “bad” do you mean like fishy bad or surströmming bad?

2807

While not as bad as surströmming (which makes people throw up when they open the can), it has a certain charming hint of rotten fish in its bouquet. It’s quite unpleasant when you open the packaging and the taste lingers in the kitchen for a while.

2808

Been meaning to make something that involves figs and roquefort. Today it was finally time. I went with a pear / fig / roquefort galette. Basically it’s a part whole-wheat pastry crust rolled out on the table. Add filling, wrap the crust around itself, pop into the oven for 40 mins or so, and it’s good to go.

2809

I only know what one of those things is!

2810

I’m kinda worried whether it’s pears or figs you know (or perhaps roquefort, in which case I’m really worried…)

2811

pear:

fig:

roquefort:

2812

Awesome, I have learned something. And honestly, I knew that a fig was a fruit and roquefort was a cheese, but if you took me to a supermarket where all the signs were missing I probably couldn’t have found either of them by sight.

2813

Made fresh gnocchi by hand for the first time this week - was surprisingly easy to make - boil potatoes, mash while steaming, add just enough flour to hold together, roll, cut, mark with fork, and boil. Yum!

Will have to see how hard it is to make homemade ravioli sans pasta maker next…

2814

Well, pasta makers are really just for us weaklings. Real Italian mamas just use a big ass rolling pin - so you can too.
(I like my pasta maker, though)

2815

Roquefort would be damn hard to spot visually, it’s just a blue cheese and looks like most other blue cheeses. Fancy cheese folk could probably identify it by a combination of taste and smell, not me though. I like cheese but I’m not some connoisseur who could identify the different types of blue cheeses from one another.

2816

I’d love to use a pasta maker, but I don’t have the room, or the budget for it right now.

But ravioli is essentially just two sheets pressed together… so figure thats a good (and not terribly difficult) place to go next. I’ve made passable Fazzoletti - hankerchief pasta - previously, so its just one step beyond that.

2817

You can buy a little mold for ravioli that’s like 10 bucks to help you out. You roll out your first sheet of pasta, place it on the mold and let it sag a bit, spoon the filling into the ravioli, place the second sheet on top, and then roll over the mold to crimp and seal the ravioli together. Not sure I’d try doing them with hand crimping (though you can buy a crimping tool that works like a pizza cutter, in which case you roll out the bottom sheet for the ravioli, put the filling in little mounds, put a top sheet over it, and then roll the crimper/cutter to separate the ravioli). I never found the fancy ravioli maker attachment to my hand crank pasta machine of much use. However, the machine itself with the ability to precisely control your pasta’s thickness, was worth the investment. (As was the noodle cutter; who wants to cut noodles by hand?)

2818

Depending on how big you like your ravioli, an empty can with both ends cut of will work as well.

2819

If you roll up the pasta sheet it’s easy to cut noodles off of the cylinder that results. Just be sure to put plenty of flour/semolina/corn meal on both sides of the pasta sheet.

2820

After years of making bread in a bread maker, I’ve tried one of those no knead bread recipes and it worked surprisingly well. Could use a bit more salt and more baking time, but I’m not going back to the bread maker bricks.