Today was a day of firsts, predominantly in the kitchen. As the day we spent cycling into town wore on into early evening, we clicked on the radio and moved obstructive books, food, pans, and trivets into the hallway, so that we could spend a couple of hours whipping up culinary masterpieces.
This evening’s cooking menu almost read like a homely three-course meal. There were Cornish pasties to start, a leek, lemon and mushroom risotto for main (though it wasn’t this recipe), and apple and cinnamon muffins to finish. No, I didn’t make the muffins (but did lick the spoon), though I did have more than a handful of fingers in the other recipes.
The first first, the pasties, were very easy to make, and shortcrust pastry is so much easier to make with a Magimix. After we’d filled, crimped and finished them, the pasties did look like mini masterpieces, and very true to their supposed Cornish origins. Workday lunches this week will be truly good.
The risotto used the first fresh leeks from the garden, but they soon appeared to dissolve into the warmed ingredient mixture. I’d always imagined a risotto to be hard to make, with all the constant stirring and adding of stock, but, as long as you keep the mixture off the bottom of the pan and keep it moist, the whole process is actually quite easy. Quick too, and the second first was eaten in less time than it took to create it.
The third first I had no hand in creating. We cracked open a bottle of Aspall’s Draught Suffolk Cyder to celebrate our culinary successes. My first taste (and our reward for an evening spent under the glare of the kitchen’s halogens) of the sparkly apple liquid was well-deserved, and an enjoyable end to my day of triple debuts.