As per Monday usual, last night’s dinner — you can tell I’m still in a fall mood and continuing my obsession with squash, shiitake mushrooms, pecans, and orzo/barley salads. We started out with pumpkin bread crostini (ha, ha, I can give toast a fancy name too) with cherry butter, carmelized onions, and goat brie, and for dinner I made an orange-glazed chilean seabass with mashed butternut squash and a pecan-mushroom-corn whole grain orzo pilaf. Also, you know, half a bottle of a peppery Malbec. A+.
Also in this week’s experiments? Marshmallows, from scratch, which made my whole kitchen a goey, confectioners-sugar-coated mess and yielded some slightly-more-gelatinous-than-expected results, but ultimately was more or less a success. Fun fact: I went into every bodega in a 5 block radius trying to find corn syrup and confectioner’s sugar. Every single one - we’re talking mouse poop beer-and-cigarettes-and-hard-rolls-with-butter bodegas, kids, not like, organic groceires - had agave syrup and stevia, but nobody had good old Karo syrup. Which in theory is kind of awesome — it’s great knowing I can buy spelt flour and organic unbleached tampons downstairs, and I still got all the sugary junk at Tops — but I mean, seriously. Oh, Williamsburg.
