over-ambitious, fun anyway!

It seemed like a good idea at the time... but maybe a little over-complicated. The idea was for a ravioli dish that would replicate an amazing Jamie O salad Tony made on my birthday, featuring mixed greens, proscuitto, peaches, cheese, and excellent oil and vinegar. We made a mix with a heavenly aroma - proscuitto, diced apples, spring onions, thyme, egg, parmesan, and black pepper. Sounds delicious, yeah? Trouble is, I was still doing a gluten-free trial, so the noodles were not all that happy about being made into parcels (would have made nice cut noodles though - corn flour, rice flour, psyllium husk powder, egg, water, oil, and beet purree for colour) - they tear rather than stretch (you can see the filling sadly escaping in the picture of the pasta cooking, above). The sauce was made from roasted red peppers, sour cream, and a roasted garlic sauce I have otherwise used with great satisfaction. Somehow it was all sort of pasty and bland and disappointing. Ah well, our pride was put in place! Anyway, Sam brought filled chocolates that made for a very balanced meal (I kept taking half bites and making Tony finish them, haha!) But where true deliciousness was lacking, wine, candlelight, and friendship made up the balance. Le'hayim!

As another weekending note, I made and was very satisfied with these crackers. I just soaked them a couple of hours. Super simple. I made them with wheat flour - it's been over a week since I made anything with wheat and it was so silky and dreamy to work with, wow. They need more salt though, maybe like 1 tbsp. I also used some ground flax. I made half plain, for peanut butter enjoyment, and half with spring onions & pepper, for cheese enjoyment. Delicious. They are so rich from the butter and yogurt that you don't have the same danger and worry of burning as you often do with crackers - so many cracker recipes have a very fine line between underbaked soft minibreads and overdone kinda-burnt crackers  - not so here. While all crackers have to be watched closely, I found these had a good 5+ minute period during which they were happy to hang out in the oven and stay pretty much the same, just browning a bit more. Practical.