Yeah, yeah. Boring post, especially without good photos of most of it. Shrug. I took photos. They just were blurry.

1. One of my favourite recipes: Chocolate-almond biscotti. In Spanish, they call them cantuccini, which is also the word in italian. They burned very slightly (I don’t know why — bad pan?) but they were delicious anyway. I brought them into school and had almost every teacher at my school tell me they were delicious. Although they all thought of them as brownies. Weird.

2. Sandwich: freshly-sliced chorizo iberico, brie, and tomatoes. This is what I’m eating right now. It’s delicious. I kind of got sick of chorizo, but then I realized that the solution was to on occasion buy good chorizo and to avoid the cheaper supermarket-bought stuff. So I went today on my way home from work to the butcher, and got them to slice me some. It’s not cheap, but it’s quite a bit better. Less gross-and-fatty, for one thing. Not as spicy, though — probably I should ask for a spicier version next time. But yes, chorizo goes well with brie.

3. Dulce de leche. I used, as ever, a slight modification of thekitchn.com‘s recipe for dulce de leche. It’s quite good, by my standards. For whatever reasons, it doesn’t come out as well here — not using a good pot, since we only have a bad one, is my main excuse — it just never thickens all the way. Oh, also the fact that I don’t know how much baking soda I’m using, since I don’t have measuring spoons. (Should bring some back from the States with me…) But delicious nonetheless. Tasted right this time.

To redux the recipe (and misuse that word):

• 1 quart of milk
• 1 cup of sugar
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda (dissolved in 1 Tbsp water)

You bring the milk & sugar to a simmer, add the sodium bicarbonate when the pan’s off the heat, and then simmer for an hour-and-a-half or so until it’s the right color and the right thickness. The baking soda thickens the mixture; the milk slowly browns (Maillard reaction!), and eventually it looks like caramel, and tastes even better. Yep.

4. Ginger snaps. I used a recipe from the Homesick Texan, another foodblog I really like, but honestly wasn’t so impressed. I mean, I like her recipes; I’ve used her quite often actually. But I dunno. I found these kind of boring. Also, mine were ginger snaps even though they weren’t supposed to be. I guess I can blame that on the oven, again. I think I’m going to give Clotilde Dusoulier’s recipe a try this weekend, I think. I even bought candied ginger for that purpose, although I’ve found that it’s fucking delicious on its own, and I want to try making it myself.

5. Finally an perhaps most excitingly, I made the recipe from Mark Bittman’s Minimalist column: Pasta with mushrooms, risotto-style. It’s a really good recipe. I altered it quite a bit, as he suggests; I used oyster mushrooms (because that was what I could find — I’m not actually a big fan of them; they’re too spongy) and no chicken, and added in frozen spinach at the last minute. I was going to use some raisins, too, but decided I didn’t want to. I definitely do recommend using the white wine, though: it makes it smell amazing. Then again, cheap white wine is really cheap here. Anyway, I was a big fan. I had it for dinner for two nights, and for one day’s lunch.