Was my turn to cook tea last night
Made some butter pastry earlier in the afternoon. (half bread flour, half normal, little more than half by weight of a mixture of goat and normal butter). Quite a sweet pastry despite no sugar in it. Be careful if you do it and are used more to margarine or oil based ones. It is halfway to puff pastry but to do that you have to do more which I could not be bothered to do.
Come dinner then sautéed some onions, carrots, mushrooms, parsnips* and celery in some rosemary and garlic oil and the usual mixed herbs.
*something I wish I had been told earlier is that such things work 10x better when you cut them into chunks of similar sizes so the thin part does not burn or the thick part does not come under done, that and I am apparently quite sensitive to it so wear gloves when sorting them (though that was a one time deal).
Was going to be a sausagemeat plait but instead was a pie.
Layered some cranberry and orange stuffing on the bottom
Veg above on top
Had some lamb gravy still from Christmas (made from the drippings in the tray from that -- no premix stuff this evening) so that went in next
Sausagemeat on top, sadly just pork rather than lamb sausage meat but it was nice sausagemeat we got from the local butcher so that was OK. Sadly no black pudding to mix in with it either; if you like black pudding or your nation's equivalent (it varies considerably compared to other things) chunk some up and throw it into the mix with some sausagemeat and it is wonderful.
Topped the pie with some more pastry. Afraid to say the egg glaze was skipped.
Some sweetcorn from a freezer pack on the side.
Afters was a hummingbird cake (
https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/fruit-recipes/hummingbird-cake/ , though I use a mix of light and dark brown sugar), today with fresh pineapple rather than canned as there was one to use up. Same measurements as above but split in half to make one standard banana version and another with bananas subbed** for a little bit of apple, blueberry, strawberry and pomegranate I boiled up in a pan done as a quasi pineapple upsidedown cake. The oil vs whatever else makes it a seriously moist and delicious cake that is way up in the stodge factor-- keep your dry airy sponge cake I will have that every time. Obviously don't use flavoured olive oil. Have done it with plain old vegetable oils (rapeseed and sunflower varieties), works 95% as well but olive oil is the winner. Some people seem to think oil in cake is a bad plan but just try it.
**other substitutions I have done here are apple sauce, apple butter, tropical fruit cups, canned pumpkin + relevant spices (one of the better ones here). Sometimes I will put nuts and/or chocolate chips in the mix as well.
The remaining pastry went for some marzipan topped mince pies (homemade mincemeat naturally) which I had for a snack later in the evening (decided to skip the chocolate covered Brazil nuts that I had been gobbling a lot of lately). I normally don't care for mincemeat and it was probably the wedge of marzipan on top that did it for me but I liked that.
I am normally averse to any kind of serious prep (much prefer to do it all in one hit) but eh if I am sitting around and making cakes anyway then no great deal
Thus ended a fairly typical weekday evening if we bother to cook around here type meal.
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