It's proving harder than I expected to get back into this. On New Year's eve I planned a sumptuous three course meal but the arrival of welcome visitors at the last minute morphed it into several bottles of wine and a single course from the plan. We took pictures, one of which is above, a West Indian inspired collation originally planned as a smaller plated starter. Filo (fillo, phyllo?) pastry tartlets filled with ackee, served with a hot and sweet red pepper sauce and salty black beans seasoned with toasted sesame oil on a bed of shredded cucumber.
Immediately revealed are two things that need improving. For a 'posh' dinner this has more of the presentation style of the 1980s than this century. Secondly, there isn't really a publishable recipe. All the individual components are very simple concoctions of a small range of pantry ingredients, out of the box cooking for ease and convenience. To meet my own expectations for the blog with satisfaction it's going to take a bit more dedication to detail which in turn has to be something is enjoyably inspirational for a blog post - a circular set of dependencies that's going to need a crank handle to get going.
Still, one of my presents has just that very thing. A spiral vegetable cutter which does just what it says it will do with the added bonus of amusingly shaped bits of leftover vegetable to give a puerile snigger at the end of work.
Not a new tool for many of course but it's fun to use and handled with restraint will add something novel to our meals. I'm looking forward to trying out some established techniques and seeing where else it can be applied.
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