Saturday, September 22, 2012

Welcome Fall...

It is fall. I am cooking. I am also ignoring the fact, that the cats (always blame the cats), have misplaced my Mariners Stitch and Pitch bag, which holds a very special shawl I was 2/3 of the way done knitting for a friend. It was a beautiful shawl, and I distinctly remember knitting a row during the playback of Clint Eastwood's chair speech and in my disbelief I messed up. Then I put it back in the bag with a note to myself that I needed to tink back that row, and find my error and carried it home. Evidently at this point the cats stole it and sold it for catnip on the black market. I wouldn't put that past them really. Of course I am seeing the friend in a few weeks and would to have the shawl to give her. Sigh.

But anyway, back to cooking. I went on a tear today.

First I went and picked the last of the blackberries. It made me feel so happy, and so at home. It had been 14 years since I got to go blackberry picking. I missed a lot this year due to weirdness of scheduling, which saddens me, we won't be making blackberry jam but we did make pie. Delicious blackberry apple pie.



Between the berry picking at the pie making, I made 2 ingredient pumpkin fairy cakes (I am calling cupcakes fairy cakes now. Cause I like it). These were actually more than 2 ingredients, as I added cinnamon, ginger, and a little curry powder to the mixture of pumpkin pie filling and spice (not yellow - spice!) cake mix. Then I drizzled a little chai glaze over them. Yum-o and easy.

Finally, while the pie baked, I made Hot and Sour soup. I made a Vegan version of PF Chang's type, but of course I tweaked it. You know me, I can never make a recipe how it says.

Basically what I did:

2qts vegetable stock
1 can Bamboo shoots
8 oz Shitake mushrooms sliced
1 carrot thinly sliced
1 stalk celery sliced
1 C soy sauce
1/2 C rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp siracha chili
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp garlic powder
fresh ground pepper
2 C or so of extra water
3/4 C brown rice
1 block Tofu pressed and drained
1/3 c cornstarch.

I dumped all but the tofu and cornstarch in a pot and brought to a boil until the rice was cooked. I will say, I added Siracha and other ingredients till it tasted right to me for the first several minutes. The extra water was added at this point too, as despite doubling the vegetable stock from the mock recipe I was going from, it was still too salty. I think using unsalted stock would fix this, but I live in a vegetable stock shortage area, and I keep forgetting to stock (Ha!) up when I go to the big city. Anyway, I cooked till the rice was done and the carrots tender, added the sliced tofu, and the cornstarch that I had mixed with water cooked it for an additional 10 minutes or so.

Seriously, best hot and sour soup ever. Seriously. And easy! I won't say it's traditional, it's Heather's Hot and Sour soup. But I loved it :). I may now be addicted.

1 comment:

  1. omg...I love blackberry pie! That looks amazing! Beautiful cup...eh....fairy cakes.

    ReplyDelete