Contemplating dinner

What do you think of an Asian brown-rice risotto, with a flavour base of soy sauce and brown rice vinegar, kombu, maybe a bit of chilli, with a side of steamed Asian greens and a miso dressing?

Is it genius or madness?

I'm leaning towards the genius side at the moment. Maybe I should go up to the shops and pick up that stalk of fresh lemongrass, since the lemongrass paste that Mother-in-Not-Law bought us has whey powder in it. I've never cooked with fresh lemongrass before. It'd be an adventure. On the other hand, lemongrass is more of a Thai flavour, whereas I'm really going for more of a Japanese flavour palette. So, no lemongrass for me. I should probably not use any chilli, either, which'll be a relief to MINL, who doesn't deal with spicy food well. What a shame I just used up the rest of the tofu! Hmm. Wish I had some daikon. I love that stuff. It's such an improbable shade of yellow. Again, probably not good for what I'm going for. Some lotus'd be nice ... I think MINL bought some water chestnuts. That'd be almost as good. Tastes & feels similar to my untutored tastebuds. Maybe I'll throw some bamboo shoots in. Wrong country, but I really love bamboo shoots.

No. Keep it simple. No bamboo. Oh! I've got some dried shiitake. I'll throw those in. That'd be brilliant. Shame we haven't got any fresh mushrooms.

Oh, I want to start dinner now!

My bread is done! My bread is done!

So yesterday I began on the Finnish Rye Bread as posted by wittgensteinian. This is the first bread recipe I've ever tried. I had a bit of trouble, needing to use 450mL instead of 300, though this may be because I stubbornly refused to use white flour and used wholemeal instead. I'm also not sure that I've used the right sort of flour. The only flour I could find in Macro that was listed as "bread flour" was the flour mixes, and seeing as slow food is what gets my juices flowing (salivatory, that is), I decided to grab the rye flour they had there that they claimed could be used for bread among other things, and use the wholemeal plain flour I already had. I also couldn't find muscovado sugar in Coles, and though I found it in a nearby foreign-food deli, it cost $4 and I just didn't have much money on me, so I decided to stick with plain dark-brown sugar for this time.

Bread goes against all my creative impulses. I like to throw myself into something for hours at a time, not surfacing, until finished. Instead I had to put the dough together, then I let it rest overnight. Doing things in sections like this isn't the way I work. It also put down my idea of getting it done in time for Liam and Hedda coming over last night. Still, they, Dave (who came over later) and my sweetheart were all introduced to my not-yet loaf, which made me pleased (I also introduced Dave to my bike. I don't know, I'm odd like this). This morning I squished it down, had most of the loaf stick to my hands and had to cover said hands with spray-on canola oil in order to knead it and then attempt to shape it, before putting it aside for more resting. I thought it would rise more than it did; it just seemed to grow everyway at once, so it's a bit of a discus-shaped thing. I don't mind, though, so long as it's edible.

I also don't know if I kneaded it for long enough yesterday. I have a piece taken out of one of my fingers on the knuckle, so I had to do what I could while avoiding using that finger. I'm pretty sure I didn't knead it for fifteen minutes, as I have since seen a recipe call for. I can only hope.

Anyway, it's baked (only took 45 minutes, which isn't much when you're doing other things) and now it's cooking on a baking rack. It looks very exciting, if not quite as neat as I would like. I can't wait until Steph comes home, and then we shall TRY IT OUT, ideally with some beetroot chutney, which I am not allowing myself to make unless I have got all my chores done, so I had better dash off.

... the beetroot chutney will also be an experiment. I want it to taste something like The Chilli Factory's beetroot chutney, but as I've never made any sort of chutney before, let alone beetroot chutney, and I can't find a recipe I like, I shall have to make it up. There will be no apple, though, but I might put in carrot as TCF does.