kitchenmage

amaretto and apples and almonds, oh my!

If one subscribes to Kevin's theory that the first meal you eat in the new year sets a sort of precedent  — and it seems like a great belief as it excuses many an indulgent meal on the first day of the year  — then my year is off to an excellent start. Some good friends called and invited us up for impromptu "pizza and whatever else was handy" dinner.

Armed with a few hours lead time, I turned to The Breadbaker's Apprentice for a quick pizza dough (my usual one takes a starter, thus more than a couple of hours). The dough wasn't my favorite, it was a pain to shape and tore far too easily for me to adopt it as a standard recipe. Then again, it was the first time I've used that recipe so I really should give it another chance. My ever-trusty freezer yielded some marinara sauce (which I make a vat of every few months and freeze) which went on two of the pizzas (the other had a pesto sauce) along with a collection of lightly sauteed veggies and some excellent pork sausage that the other guests brought.

Homemade caviar

Maybe I should call today's post Deep End Cooking (with apolgies to Deep End Dining) or Mage, Don't Make It! (wih a nod to Steve). At least I can be thematic with all the Halloween horrors out there.

I think I've eaten caviar three or four times in my life and, while it was okay—particularly
the Columbia River sturgeon caviar at the Herbfarm—I wasn't sufficiently bowled over to pay the rather steep price. So when a friend dropped by the other day with a fresh salmon and several skein of salmon eggs and asked if I wanted to make caviar I thought, "Ummm, errr, sure...?"