So that was Friday night. Saturday morning, for breakfast I made banana pecan buttermilk pancakes (page 3 of Relish--the first recipe in the book). As you can imagine, they were delicious! And because I had a friend over, I had help making them, which was great fun. Cooking is always better with friends. She sliced the bananas and helped me decide when it was time to flip the pancakes over--which I am never good at, since they always end up getting slightly burnt. That was the case here, but only for a few of them.
To spice things up, my friend suggested adding a few drops of vanilla into the batter (not in the recipe). That turned out to be a good decision, and I think the next time I make them I will put more in to add flavor, possibly with some cinnamon (another suggestion from my friend). Though the banana slices were a bit too thick for some of the pancakes and ended up falling out, and some of them came out burnt--and I discovered too late that we had no maple syrup!--it was a very good breakfast. And they were made with wheat flour, so it was a healthy one as well.
(Dinner that Saturday was fish fingers and custard, to accompany the season finale of "Doctor Who"--I shall review that in a future post as well if anyone is interested.)
Tonight for dinner I made mint-ricotta ravioli with snap peas and asparagus (page 254 of Relish). I've only ever eaten asparagus once before, so I was looking forward to having it again. The recipe calls for scallions, which I have never cooked with before, so that was fun to try. Also, I've never used wonton wrappers for anything, but thankfully my mom had a package of them in the freezer. They are quite thin, and can break easily if you handle them too roughly (they can also stick together easily, as I found out the hard way when I was putting them on the plate, hehe). I got a fresh mint plant from the supermarket for that part of the filling, something else I have very little experience using. I think the pieces of leaf in the ravioli were a bit too big, but I don't know the proper technique for finely chopping herbs. Also, I could not find any ricotta cheese, so instead I used some of the parmesan we already had in the refrigerator. I still think it turned out well. My dad liked it, so I call it a success.
I ended up having dinner a bit late however, since the stove decided to be uncooperative and not heat up fast enough to boil the water. Other than that, 'twas a successful meal, and likely one I will make again should the occasion call for it.
For my next trick, maybe a dessert??
