Mar 24

 The days go past, Athena is in a routine, no major changes, still lame, still buggered, but we're making it work. At the rate of painkillers she is on, they, if nothing else, will eventually do her in. It is what it is. Comfortable as she can be in the twilight of her days.

Today she took herself off for a very gentle stroll and sniff along my street. Made it to the top of the road just about before coming home. Either me or Hazel just tend to let her wander out the front, no lead, no collar, just letting her slowly sniff around. She's not running anywhere. Or even walking very fast. Slow and gentle old girl having a sniff about. She seems to appreciate it. Still getting bored though. The mind is still working. The body has failed.

We are ok. A new normal. Twilight. Melancholy. But still appreciating every day we get. Bitter sweet.

I have been in a lot of pain this week. Finally the gout is starting to ease up as of this evening. It has been bad. And so have all my other pains. Very sketchy back. Upper chest. Knee. Everything. Screechy. Walking upstairs has been a challenge every time. Eh well. And as for the other health stuff. I have pushed it into the back. It's still there. And I wobble. And wooze. And glitch. But I'm just pretending it's not happening.

Today, a smidge better on the foot, I took the arguably stupid decision to make tartiflette. Well. Ghetto tartiflette. Experimental vegetarian tartiflette.

One of my friends is an ex chef. And it shows. He cooks nothing but absolutely kick ass high end restaurant food ( but not super high end single scoop of bullshit on a plate malarkey ) whenever I visit. He cooked me tartiflette a couple of years ago, and like most of his dishes, it has stuck with me.

I hit him up yesterday just for a few pointers. He knows his stuff. His advice was to keep it simple. He had cooked tartiflette in all kinds of ways ( of course ! ) and had found the best result was also the simplest, don't add shit, just keep it simple.

I didn't do exactly what he said - I had got some of the wrong ingredients ( I had made a pretty close guess as to what was in it, and ended up with an "alternative" but not exactly wrong version ). He uses reblochon - which is strictly speaking the absolute authentic cheese to use - whereas I got camembert ( which even the French also use this, so, not too far off piste ). He advised not to use cream ( oops, I got cream ) and use creme fraiche instead, as the cream was too rich. In the end he said I could cut the cream with veg stock to bring it down a shade - so I did that. Half and half cream and veg stock.

Then there's the lardons.

The secret to a lot of tasty dishes often comes down to a bit of fatty pork hiding somewhere at its base. Lardons. Pancetta. Guanciale. Hell even an old pork bone in the marinara. Fatty salty pork lends a huge umami bomb to whatever it's in. It's a cheat in a way. It lifts the flavours of what you put it in ( if applicable ) way up there.

No surprise it makes its way into tartiflette.

But I wanted a vegetarian version. No meat.

Replicating something like bacon vegetarian wise is a hard ask. You can get fake bacon. Which never tastes right in my humble opinion, but is ok. And. Ironically. For some vegetarians. They hate the bacon taste. Hazel is one of those. Hates bacon.

So really it comes down to. How do you replicate the umami bomb that is fatty salty pork ? That's really what it's all about. The umami bomb.

Mushrooms.

Mushrooms have a huge umami hit. Although it can depend on a) what mushroom you use and b) how you cook it. To get the highest umami bomb hit you need to dehydrate them. Dry them. It does something chemically to them and absolutely kicks the umami up.

So that's what I did. Took some mushrooms, a good sprinkle of salt ( we're going for umami salty ), some garlic, a little smoked paprika, and a good dose of liquid smoke ( to get a smoky salty bacon ballpark thing going ) and stuck them in the oven for 30 minutes and left them for a day.

They turned out as small powerful umami kicks. You probably wouldn't want to eat very many of them on their own. They were tasty. But very strong. But that's ok. We're using them in a larger dish...

From there I did a typical tartiflette, but instead of lardons, used the mushrooms. Sliced up my camembert heightwise as per standard, but then quartered it because I had a wider and less deep dish. Softened the onions, put some garlic in - as I was using camembert and not reblochon - added the mushrooms back in, let it meld for a while, put the cream and veg stock in, warmed through, and then layered, taters, onions + mushrooms, camembert, repeat once. Pour any remaining stock and cream. In the end I added a little extra water to the thing - I figured it might need it, I was a bit short on cream.

Turned out very tasty, and the mushrooms absolutely did a great job as lardon substitutes. Not a compromise. Really good in their own right. I think however I can do even better. Dry the mushrooms more. And pick a different mushroom type for even more umami. But it's not like these failed. Porcini mushrooms might be the gold standard here though.

I paid for it with painful feet and collapsing gasping after putting it in the oven. But it was nice. And it's nice to be able to actually achieve something in a day. Even if it's hard for me to struggle through. In my better days this would have been an easy dinner to make.

Hazel loved it. Had to stop herself scoffing the lot. Ah ha. You always know you've done a spanky taste job when people stuff themselves til they burst. I used to do that a lot back in the day. Take delight in making people pop. I am not good for dieters. These days, I don't have the energy and rarely the enthusiasm.

Anywho. Good stuff. We'll call that a success and move on.

Incidentally.

Here's my first chicago deep dish pizza I made the other week. 

 You can't really tell from that angle. But this is 12 inches across and 1.5 inches deep. In one of my specific cast iron chicago pizza pans.

No cooked shot sadly. It was gone before I remebered to get a photo. It was delicious. A bit of a work of love, everything cooked from scratch, and as much as I could manage, I nursed the marinara to slow cooked perfection ( well, by my standards anyway, I am sure Italians would argue it's very far from perfect ). Overkill for your regular day of the week dinner. But lovely for a rare properly done pizza.

Classic spinach chicago deep dish. I prewilted and dried the spinach off to keep the moisture content down ( something you have to be wary of in a chicago pizza to prevent soggy bottoms ! ) . No provolone though - I did a small mix of cheddars on the bottom and the typical butt load of mozarella on top. Spinach on top of the cheese. And then the marina as the top level with a fresh dusting from a proper block of parmesan regiano.

Fancy.

Crust came out perfect. Crispy, chewy, not soggy at all, very tasty ( was a corn / flour dough blend I did on the fly ).

I can do better with this too. But. Another day. Next time I will do the proper provolone instead of the cheddar ( although I still might four cheese it up ). And will try maybe some mushrooms, maybe some black olives as well as spinach. 

Lastly.

I am off my mental meds. Not really by design. It's just. Happened. I think a lot of that is because traipsing up and down stairs is a hard ask at the moment with the state I've been in. So. Unless I specfically remember to take meds. I then cannot face going down and upstairs just to take meds and therefore end up skipping them. This has resulted me in skipping them consistently day after day. So far I am ok. It's not smart. I need to start them back up again. It is what it is. I will try and remember them for tomorrow.