Creamy broccoli soup

I'm not usually a cream-of-whatever soup person, but this was easy and so delicious.

You need:
broccoli
onion
veg stock
almonds
miso
preserved lemon
salt and pepper
Sichuan chilli oil

Saute onions, add broccoli and stock and cook until soft.
Meanwhile, in a high-speed blender, puree almonds, preserved lemon and miso with a little bit of water.
When the broccoli is done, add to the blender and blend it up. You can puree it all, or leave some chunky. Finish with some chilli oil and pepper.

Birthday cake

A veganized version of Black Star Pastry's Strawberry Watermelon cake:

For the almond dacquoise, I used my recipe, but with aqua faba in place of the water + versawhip (and I also didn't heat the mixture, working on my unproven assumption that baking would activate the agar). I made two layers a bit over 20cm in diameter -- next time I might make smaller, taller layers.

For the cream, I used rad whip with some rosewater added. Next time I might use Soyatoo, which I expect would hold its shape better -- the rad whip didn't whip up a lot to begin with, and then as the cake sat it deflated a lot.

Overall, not as impressive looking as its inspiration, but it tasted superb, and was still delicious when we finished it a day or two later.

Durango

Almost Durango cookies (veganized with a bit of cornstarch and water, and dark instead of milk chocolate):

I used alder smoked salt, and though I thought I was sprinkling it on a bit too generously, in the end I couldn't really taste any smoke at all. Nevertheless, these are excellent chocolate chip cookies with almond and cocoa nibs, and salt, and they are flat with crisp edges and chewy middles. A bit more smokiness would be delicious I'm sure. I read about these on the Tipsy Baker, and I think she might've suggested using smoked almonds which is an excellent idea.

Serendipity

So, when it comes to food shopping, I bristle at the thought of planning a week's meals and writing a list. I do bring a list, but it's of staples that we've run out of. And when it comes to fruit and veggies, I buy what looks good and what's cheap.

This means that I can have a recipe bookmarked for ages before it happens that all the necessary ingredients are in the house at the same time. It's only taken about a year for me to get around to this recipe: cauliflower with almonds, capers and raisins. (The capers were the hold-out ingredient -- somehow they haven't made it onto the staples list, but I think they might deserve a place there now.)

This was really good. The story behind the dish is that it was developed to convert a cauliflower-hater. I don't know whether it can do that, but this cauliflower-lover liked it a lot. It's a bit of a fussy recipe, with a few separate steps, but it's easy enough. The cauliflower is sauteed and then finished in the oven. It's topped with capers, almonds, raisins, herbs (I only had parsley, and left out the chives and tarragon. If I had waited until I had tarragon in the house, I don't think I ever would have gotten around to making this.) and toasted bread crumbs. Delicious!

For lunch today I had a simplified version: cauliflower with capers, raisins and parsley -- still good. I think I am officially a fan of the raisin + caper combination.