Jamie's Giant Veg Rösti, Poached Eggs, Spinach & Peas

When I said I was spooked by cooking, I wasn't kidding.  It doesn't mean that I don't do it though.  I just. . . do little things!  Like this one.  It's a bit labor intensive so you'd need a bit of time to set-up.  But so deliciously worth it.

Jamie's recipe includes some good tips where the eggs and the potatoes are concerned and that was fortunate for me.  They're things I think you learn as you get further along in cooking.  I'm still sort of getting there.  Therefore!  Useful!  There's even a video of someone doing the recipe if you want a really detailed briefing.

Jamie's Giant Veg Rösti, Poached Eggs, Spinach & Peas

Ingredients:

• 600g potatoes
• 3 large carrots
• sea salt and ground pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1/2 a lemon
• extra virgin olive oil
• 100g frozen peas
• 100g baby spinach
• 4 large eggs
• 50g feta cheese

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C (350F).  
2. Peel the potatoes and carrots, then coarsely grate them in a food processor or by hand on a box grater.  Add a good pinch of salt, toss ad scrunch it all together, then leave for 5 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, mix the mustard, a good squeeze of lemon juice and a couple of lugs of extra virgin olive oil with a small pinch of salt and pepper in a medium bowl.  Set aside.
4. Drizzle a really good lug of olive oil into a large bowl and add a good pinch of pepper.  Handful by handful, squeeze the potato and carrot mixture to get rid of the excess salty liquid, then sprinkle into the bowl.  
5. Toss in the oil and pepper until well mixed, then evenly scatter it over a large oiled baking tray (roughly 30cm x 40cm).
6. Roast for around 35 minutes, or until golden on top and super-crispy around the edges.
7. Meanwhile, blanch the peas for a minute in a large pan of boiling salted water, then scoop out, add to the bowl of dressing and pile the spinach on top.
8. Just before your rösti is ready, with the water gently simmering, crack in the eggs, poach to your liking, then carefully remove with a slotted spoon.  
9. Serve the rösti with the eggs on top.  Quickly toss the salad together to dress it and scatter in piles on the rösti.
10. Crumble over the feta cheese and serve.

TIP: Poached eggs can be a little finicky.  Use the freshest eggs you can.  But seriously?  Don't worry that much.  It's all tasty!

Source: http://www2.woolworthsonline.com.au/Shop/PrintRecipe/3041

Color Recognition

I love listening to people talk.  

I've come to find that not everyone thinks the same way.  When I was seven, I explained that I loved my Uncle Justin's voice; it was a smoky blue.  

My mother peered at me with a confused expression and asked in her orange, roughed-up tone, "What on earth does that mean?"  

I didn't know what she didn't understand, so I just blinked back with my own puzzled expression.  I had tried very hard to find the right word to describe the kind of blue.  I had even gone to a big book for it.  It had sounded right.

I'm older now and realise that not everyone can get a sense of colors from hearing people talk.  I don't mention it to people because it'll generally just confuse them, the way it did my poor mother.  Granted, my high school English teachers thought I was extremely clever with poetry.  

This was a stroke of luck because I needed a good grade to escape that prison of an institution.  

I can suppress it to some extent when I have to.  The city can be a riot of tones, colors, shapes.  It's brilliant for inspirational purposes but unfortunately I've never been able to use the knack to actually make music.  I'm not bitter about it; just a bit put out.  Musicians who make it big get fame and fortune.  And probably all of the really good food.

Where was I?  Oh yes.  Listening to people talk and colors.

There's one minor advantage that I have, sensing colors where sound is involved.  The same sounds tend to evoke the same array of colors and . . . well, they aren't images.  I can't call them images.  Dashes, bursts, jagged and gyrating lines. . ?  It all depends on the situation for me.  Find someone else who has the same 'condition' (like what we have is an illness; it's not), you'll be told different colors.  At least, this is from what I've read.  I've never met another person like me, though we're something like four to ten percent of the population, depending on what you read and who you ask.  Somehow, you're far more likely to come across a left-handed person.

Or maybe, like me, people just don't think saying, "That woman's tone is super pink and fritzy" is a very good conversation starter.  I certainly never told the medical officer about it at any point; we get enough pych screening as is, thank you.

But it's those very same qualities - the colors, the movement - that allows me to identify people's voices more accurately.  I don't have to see your mouth moving to know it's you.  I hear you and, after a fashion, I'll still see you.  Just not a you that you know about.

Keep that in mind, kids.  It might be important, later on in my story.

Colder. You're getting colder.

Life got a little complicated somewhere along the way.

I mean, you have simple things to consider simply to stay alive and that's naturally at the top of the list. Physiological things according to some guy named Maslow.  I need to breathe, I need to eat, I need water (or something stronger these days), I need to sleep, I need shelter.  

Arguably, I need sex too, but the good Lord hasn't seen fit to end that dry spell either.  Points to Maslow for putting that at the most basic level of requirements, though.  He knows the way to a girl's heart.  If I had stopped at the bottom of the pyramid, life would have likely been way more simple.  

I am coming undone because of that heart that Maslow might have had, but he's a bit dead to claim it.  Not because I'm in love or anything so fortunate as that.  But rather, physically I am coming undone because of my heart.  My heart of gold.

I am hanging on for dear life myself these days and I'm terrified of looking down.  Each time they bleed me, I feel myself cool a bit more, I feel the fingers of apathy start creeping in.  It was never like that when I pricked myself, knicked myself, scored myself.  Maybe they're taking too much.  Maybe it's simply too often.

Maybe I always gave too little.

I've lived a life where I don't even know the rules of my self, let alone anything else.  I always assumed that no one would find me out, that it would be okay, that I would live a life of beautiful obscurity in the Court.

I thought very, very wrong.

And I am getting very, very cold.

Apple Crumble Loaf

I bet you all thought I was kidding about the recipe part.

Hah.  Joke's on you!  I actually bake.  I enjoy it.  It's like. . . effort with visible, potentially delicious results.  Better yet, no one has died as a result of my experimentation!  But to be clear, I tend to do a recipe generally the way it tells me to and, if I like it okay, then I'll modify it a bit.  

But I am also a girl and I'm prone to changing my mind about this rule.  It's not really a rule so much as a basic template that I choose to follow in baking.  Conversely?  Cooking scares me.  Bit of a shame, considering I'm a death knell to people's diets and waistlines.  One of my co-workers says that I'm slowly killing him.

He also seems to think it's a delicious death, so I suppose that's okay.

For reference, I'll post to you what I did and also post the place where I got the recipe!  That way I'm not taking credit from anyone who seriously deserves it and I don't muddle the recipe up with a bunch of confusing talk.

Apple Crumble Loaf

Ingredients:

• 140g of butter, cut into small pieces, plus extra for the tin
• 250g self raising whole wheat flour (don't worry, my fellow Americans.  I'll give you a recipe for self-raising flour!)
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 70g light brown sugar
• 70g raw sugar
• 100g raisins
• 3 large eggs
• 3 apples, peeled, cored and shopped
• 4 tablespoons milk (US tablespoons.  In Australian tablespoons, this is 5 tablespoons)

For the crumble topping:

• 2 rounded tablespoons plain flour (2.5-3 Tablespoons Australian)
• 50g butter
• 50g brown sugar

Loaf method:

1. Heat oven to 160C/140C fan-forced (this is 320F/285F fan-forced).  Line the base of a loaf tin with baking paper.
2. Tip the flower and spice into a food processor and add the butter.  Pulse until you have fine crumbs and then mix in the sugar.  
3. Pour mixture into a large mixing bowl and then stir in raisins, eggs, apples and milk.  Mix well until combined.
4. Pour into tin and then smooth top.

Crumble method:

1. To make the topping, rub the flour, butter and sugar through your fingers to make a rough crumble.  Feel free to add more flour until it reaches a consistency you're happy with here, I tinkered a bit because I had no nuts.  I may have added more flour than this, but I wanted to err on the side of caution for recipe notation.
2. Sprinkle evenly over the cake mixture and bake for 50-55 minutes, until firm to the touch and a fine skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.
3. Cool in tin for 15 minutes, then turn out and cool on a wire rack.
4. Attempt in vain to not devour the entire lot.

Original recipe source: http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/2198652/apple-crumble-loaf

I fully intend to wander their site and see what other little delicious gems I can find!

Bonus:  Self-Raising Flour

• 1 cup plain flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

And just like that, you have a cup of self-raising flour!  It's useful to make a bunch at once if you're a bakeaholic and then use it as you need it.

G

Did you know
that I write my 'G's the way you used to?
Of course you would not because
it's a curve-and-stick way of chasing your ghost.

Did you know
that I was suffocating beneath the weight of my smile
when they told me of how they said it was okay
for you to go now?

You are gone and one day
I'll go too.

G

~*~*~*~

Whelp.  That was a bit creepy.

Moving on!  Because. . . that's all that's all there is, right?