In my “Comfort Food” blog a couple of weeks ago I declared that I was going to attempt to try something new every week for a year. Trying to break old habits and neglect old favourites is presenting me with a few challenges! I must confess that there are some things that even a self-confessed “change agent” finds hard to shift away from. Take pasta for example, well pasta is a creamy, lemony, pale colour when it is cooked – isn't it? Sure it comes in all shapes and sizes and designs….. Granted …… I am of Italian heritage, so a bowl of pasta is cooked ‘al dente’ tossed with some olive oil and then the tomato sauce that the meat for the main course has been cooked in is tossed around the pasta, grate some Parmesan or Pecorino and there is the bowl of pasta to kick of the meal. Really, pasta is not purple, black, orange or striped…….or is it? So for the first time – hard to believe – but yes, for the first time in my life, I ate black – seaweed pasta, in the form of ravioli stuffed with a prawn filling.
Now another thing people who know me have heard me say millions of times – I like my food to be “WET”. So this serving of two very large (almost the size of my fist) ravioli sitting on a slice of char-grilled capsicum, with octopus tentacles draped over the top was rather dry by my standards!! Also not the way I normally eat pasta. Did I like it? It was OK! I would have altered the filling to give it a bit more wetness, I would have removed one or two tentacles so that I did not have the whole octopus on the plate and I would have provided a little sauce of some description. But, it was palatable. Who was the chef? – I don’t really know – I was the guest at a lunch and I don’t really know who was responsible for the menu. The main course was grilled fish, followed by a fig and frangipane tart – very satisfying. Albeit all a bit dry! BUT week one of my challenge has kicked off.
Share with me new tastes you have enjoyed lately.
In week two – just gone – the new tastes were salts, and I mean many, many, varieties of salt. I will tell you more in an upcoming blog ……but French Lavender salt on hot chips…….SENSATIONAL, Tahitian vanilla salt on ice cream…..DIVINE!! DC xx
Now another thing people who know me have heard me say millions of times – I like my food to be “WET”. So this serving of two very large (almost the size of my fist) ravioli sitting on a slice of char-grilled capsicum, with octopus tentacles draped over the top was rather dry by my standards!! Also not the way I normally eat pasta. Did I like it? It was OK! I would have altered the filling to give it a bit more wetness, I would have removed one or two tentacles so that I did not have the whole octopus on the plate and I would have provided a little sauce of some description. But, it was palatable. Who was the chef? – I don’t really know – I was the guest at a lunch and I don’t really know who was responsible for the menu. The main course was grilled fish, followed by a fig and frangipane tart – very satisfying. Albeit all a bit dry! BUT week one of my challenge has kicked off.
Share with me new tastes you have enjoyed lately.
In week two – just gone – the new tastes were salts, and I mean many, many, varieties of salt. I will tell you more in an upcoming blog ……but French Lavender salt on hot chips…….SENSATIONAL, Tahitian vanilla salt on ice cream…..DIVINE!! DC xx
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