Friday, January 2nd, 2009 - Pasta and Ikea Bread

We took a holiday day and went boarding and skiing at Mt Cypress. I had some left over roasted yellow yams my mom had packed for me for the airplane. D had yogurt. We had a pot of coffee with some beans that D doesn't think are fit for Caps. I think his sister bought them from Cuba. I think it's v tasty. I packed a couple of Clif Bars in case the new lodge at Cypress was as bad as the old. IT WAS. It's bigger and has more options but it still sucks.

The Burrito Station was closed. The asian rice bowl only had a Chicken or Beef option. People were still used to the old lodge which made you follow a line through the whole caf even if you only wanted something from one station. I had a Garden Burger for 6.5 and D had some strange lump that I think was a cheese dog. We split a diet coke. The burger was so-so so I drowned it in Mustard and Relish. I had half a Odawalla bar for dessert. It was a spirulina bar and tasted like grass. Blech.

At home, I had been thinking about the macaroons from yesterday all the way back. D had been cursing our not packing the Soy nuts I bought last night.

We got back, I had a bowl of leftover spicy lentil soup and tea. D started on the Lingebrot bread mix we had bought from Ikea a few months ago. We had made half the loaf in the summer and it didn't turn out very well. Between the two of us, I'm the baker (and the experimentor but that's another story). So when I noticed D hadn't kneaded I made a few suggestions. I did what I might if I were making bread from scratch. Push it around a bit more to make more gluten. Unlike scones, I like my bread chewy. Form a ball in the same bowl you originally combined the ingredients. No need to clean the bowl. Add a T of oil. Hold the ball of dough and swirl it around the bowl as if you were coating the bowl. Turn the ball over leaving the greased side up. Cover with a towel or plastic and keep somewhere warm. D's kitchen is a bit cold now so we used the oven. You can also leave by the water boiler. Let rise for 1 hour. Turn out on to a cookie sheet formed into the loafy shape, leave to rise for another half hour and bake as per the instructions on the package. Not bad but don't expect it to be roasty brown like on the package. Instead, you'll get a brown about the colour of an over milked coffee. Still pretty good.

Our main dish was pasta D had bought from the Rubicon winery in the Nappa Valley that's run by the Francis Ford Coppola family. He brought back a couple of souvenir packages. He was once a partner in a really homey highly praised Italian restaurant in the Bay area that closed after they were fed up with over regulation. Anyhoo, I had high hopes for the pasta. My favourites are, in order, Parpardelle.. the wide (3cm) mid length noodle, radiatori that looks like,...well a radiator, gemelli that means twinning and it's precisely that. A rounded noodle folded and twisted into itself. mmmmmmm. So between the farfallone (3 cm by 5 cm noodles) and whole wheat linguine, I chose the former. MISTAKE. I can't advise you strongly enough against buying COPPOLA pasta. It disintegrated and the water turned into congee goo. None of the noodles kept it's shape but was still chewy. What shame for the sauce D made.

This was just a home brew based on fridge contents:
1 large can of tomatoes
1 half onion
1 portobello (not a) mushroom
handful of oyster mushrooms
1 small zuccini cubed
1 clove garlic


Fry the veg for a few minutes until the onion is soft. run a knife around the open can of tomatoes to chop them up a bit. add a splash of red wine. We used the wine were having for dinner. The sauce was amazing. I had a second bowl and tossed out the noodles.











DO NOT NOT NOT BUY COPPOLA PASTA see what happened. They're too chewy, don't hold their shape and are totally bland.















With the dinner, we had a Catena Malbec. Very drinkable.
Decent body and length. I particularly hate short reds.

For dessert and well while waiting for the pasta I had a macaroon.