Week T-4: Seafood stock, Williams Sonoma Vegetarian cookbook


I'm fairly sure we're at T-4 weeks now - though that's just a guess. I'm also sure that I am ready to throw everything in my cupboards out the window. It's time for spring cleaning - I have a really really strange set of things in my spice cabinet, my fridge, and my pantry. I think the overview of my attempt to clean all three out will be the next blog entry.

For now, I'm happy to report success in my latest experiment. I looked through the Vegetarian cookbook and found a cold soba noodle dish that would use up some soba in my pantry, and also reintroduce vegetables to my diet after a long hiatus. I did have to tweak the recipe a little. First, I was at Safeway and was unable to find kelp and some of the baby veggies required - though much to my surprise, they did have baby zucchini and some really fun sunrise squash. They also had sheets of nori, which I thought I'd have to forgo. I added leek instead of green onion - because I had some left over from cooking two weeks ago. See the photo above - I took it next to my computer mouse to get some scale.




The other change I made was a bit of a departure - I wanted to use the seafood stock, and some leftover smoked salmon, which made the dish technically not vegetarian. Not really even vegetarian at all, actually. That said, the salmon was very salty and perfect for the dish. It was also very pretty, and quite good.