Last weekend I made madeleines, mince pies, and pizza. Admittedly "made" isn't quite accurate as far as the mince pies go, since I bought both the mincemeat and pastry pre-made, but the other two were from scratch. I'd been meaning to try madeleines for a while, following a recipe on 101 Cookbooks. It worked very well, and buoyed up by my success in an area of cooking I rarely venture into - sweet things - I thought I'd try soup.
With the exception of a very rich mushroom, blue cheese and sour cream concoction I sometimes make, I don't usually bother with soup because I don't much like it. However, earlier in the week one of my colleagues was carrying a tub of butternut squash soup with dill for her lunch, and it was a rich orange colour and looked thick and delicious. I like dill a lot too, so it sounded worth trying.
This afternoon I roasted a beautiful squash, an onion and potatoes, and then blended the lot with vegetable stock, milk, fresh dill, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and pepper. It looks lovely, but the taste is so disappointing. Because of its colour I expected the squash to have a deep pumkinny taste, but it actually has a thin and slightly sharp flavour somewhere between carrot, parsnip and turnip. I tried it before I put the dill in, and still had hope that the herb would make it all worthwhile. But the dill I bought tasted like aniseed, which either means that the herb grower doesn't know the difference between dill and fennel, or that American dill always tastes like aniseed. Since American basil all tastes like aniseed to me, this doesn't seem unlikely - though it would have been nicer and more useful if I'd discovered that American dill tasted like basil.
With the exception of a very rich mushroom, blue cheese and sour cream concoction I sometimes make, I don't usually bother with soup because I don't much like it. However, earlier in the week one of my colleagues was carrying a tub of butternut squash soup with dill for her lunch, and it was a rich orange colour and looked thick and delicious. I like dill a lot too, so it sounded worth trying.
This afternoon I roasted a beautiful squash, an onion and potatoes, and then blended the lot with vegetable stock, milk, fresh dill, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and pepper. It looks lovely, but the taste is so disappointing. Because of its colour I expected the squash to have a deep pumkinny taste, but it actually has a thin and slightly sharp flavour somewhere between carrot, parsnip and turnip. I tried it before I put the dill in, and still had hope that the herb would make it all worthwhile. But the dill I bought tasted like aniseed, which either means that the herb grower doesn't know the difference between dill and fennel, or that American dill always tastes like aniseed. Since American basil all tastes like aniseed to me, this doesn't seem unlikely - though it would have been nicer and more useful if I'd discovered that American dill tasted like basil.
No comments:
Post a Comment