Some recent cooking

I tried a few new recipes or new ingredients over the past few weeks.

First off was the cauliflower soup I already posted a recipe for. It was pretty good and I'd definitely make it again. In fact, I liked it better than the other cauliflower thing I made (for Easter dinner). I did a "garlic mash with cauliflower and potatoes" that is from HERE. (Spoiler alert: it is not a great way to "disguise" cauliflower, I totally can taste the cauliflower).

I ran the stuff through the blender because I like more of a whipped-potatoes texture. Hopefully I did not break my blender but it really didn't want to blend up the second batch of cooked cauliflower.

I will admit to being slightly disappointed in that one; I think the soup I posted is a better use of cauliflower. I think cheese is a better adjunct flavor than sour cream is....

For St. Patrick's Day, I made lamb loaf- I got ground lamb at the Kroger's (you can find it, sometimes). I just followed the meatloaf recipe in my big Better Homes and Gardens book and used oregano (which goes well with lamb) as the main herb to flavor it. Then I made a little Cumberland sauce (currant jelly, orange peel, mustard powder, powdered ginger, and a bit of cider - real Cumberland sauce has port in it but I don't like port and don't keep it on hand. I have made it with cider vinegar and that works as well).

On that one: 10/10, would cook again. Cumberland sauce is *very good* with lamb - I like it better than I like the mint jelly that was always traditional in my family when I was a kid (I suspect that's the influence of my dad's Irish heritage). And the lamb loaf was good on its own merits.

I also made a sort of cheese and bread souffle thing with some leftover bread over the weekend. It was okay but I don't love it; it's kind of squishy. I thought it would be more like that cheese-and-egg strata thing that was popular in the 80s.

And for Easter dinner dessert, I made a box-mix pound cake. I don't generally like box mixes, but this was Krusteaz brand and theirs tend to be a cut above. This was Meyer Lemon Pound Cake. I hope they still have it at Kroger the next time I'm there because it was very good, much easier than making a pound cake from scratch, and probably cheaper as it already has the eggs in (you just add butter and water....which means you can also lick the bowl as the eggs in it are pasteurized). It was very good and I was happy I made it.

Tonight, I have some new-to-me refrigerated cheese and pesto tortellini (I checked: low enough in sodium) so I'll see how those are.