(no subject)

For dinner, I made a red beans and rice-ish dish. (I say 'ish' because it's not traditional: I used bacon instead of the traditional ham hock and andouille sausage, and I added some dried chanterelles and dried tomatoes to help make up for the loss of 'meaty' flavors from not using the sausage.) It was pretty good, I thought; not sure what Pava (who is less fond of beans than I am) thought.

I got many awesome things for Christmas, but among my favorites are the things I got to help me cook: a cast iron dutch oven (7 qt; massive even empty), an immersion blender, a mandoline. I used all of them making dinner tonight -- the mandoline for slicing the celery and bell peppers (and lordy lordy, it went quickly), the dutch oven for sweating the onions, celery and bell peppers and then slow-braising the whole mess; the immersion blender for smoothing the beans out. Yum.

(A 7-qt dutch oven, even just one-quarter full of beans and liquid, is really heavy. It's going to take some practice to learn to maneuver it, especially when it's hot. But I got pretty good at maneuvering the 12-inch skillet full of food, so I'm confident I'll get used to this one, too.)