bits and pieces

We’ve had some rough, rainy weather here this week, and it’s made me want to hole up at home with warm things to eat and drink. Unfortunately, I haven’t had all the supplies I needed, so I had to go out and get some things before I could cook. So much effort!

I really wanted some salmon yesterday, and since I liked how it was cooked in my first try at making Asian Salmon-and-Rice Soup, I made a variation of that. I used dashi again, left out the cilantro (I didn’t have any on-hand), and then swapped out the rice for somen noodles. I’d seen a package of them at Marukai (the nearest Japanese market) and realized I hadn’t had before, so I bought them. They’re similar in size to angel hair or cappellini, which is my favorite type of pasta, but with a slightly different taste.

The end result was all right, though a bit plain and not that pretty to look at. I didn’t have any fresh cilantro, so that was left out, and I definitely missed some green with this. But the salmon was nice and tender, though I wished I’d had more of it.

For tonight’s dinner, I made a recipe from The Kitchn, a food blog I happened upon last week. (I did find some interesting recipes there, though I don’t really have an interest in the kitchen design or “what should I do with (insert ingredient)?” posts.) The recipe is called Beth’s Lenticchie con Ditalini (Lentils with Ditalini), and was apparently part of a contest they held last year for quick meal recipes.

Again, I made some variations, though not really intentionally this time around. First, the pasta: I’d never heard of ditalini before, but it’s apparently not in the places I normally buy my foodstuffs. From the pictures, it looks like shorter macaroni, so I just used a box of that instead. As for the lentil soup, I accidentally grabbed a can of lentil vegetable soup, so I just went with that. Oh, and the Roma tomatoes I saw at the store didn’t look so happy, so I had to leave the single tomato out.

There isn’t really that much to the preparation, so it was done fairly quickly. My only complaint with the recipe itself is that the ingredients list calls for a whole pound of pasta, but then says to save some for another meal. You really don’t need all that pasta, especially for a recipe that serves maybe 2 people at most. I’d say to use half of that amount, unless you really want to eat that type of pasta all week.

Now, as for the taste… I thought it was really nice, except for the mascarpone cheese. That part just didn’t work for me, and kind of muddied the flavor too much, as if you just put a whole pat of butter on something that tasted quite nice on its own. I preferred to enjoy the taste of the soup itself, combined with the pasta, so I’d recommend leaving the mascarpone out. If you really need some cheese though, I’d go with parmesan.

So, given all this, I didn’t really feel like the recipe itself added much to the soup itself. I’d never had this variety of lentil soup before, but it seemed like it would be fine as-is, without needing anything more involved than heating it up a bit. The green onions — always my favorite — were definitely a nice addition, but you could blend those in while heating it and get about the same result. I didn’t even really notice the garlic. I know I left out the tomato, but I’m not sure that it would have added much.