Shane Mickey anagama fired platter

Here's another great pot from Shane Mickey. I think he called this the "hand of God platter" - great piece!

Yesterday was one of those busy, screwy days. My studio time consisted of uncovering pots to dry more so I could trim and then never getting back into the studio, other than to recover them for todays work!

My plan for yesterday was to make my two sour dough starters. Well one of the starters I ordered and received went walkies. Jim and I searched the whole house and it was no where to be found, so I got back on line and spent a couple of hours researching various starters and wound up ordering two new San Francisco sour dough starters and one new Sour Dough cookbook since one of the sellers said you need to follow the instructions in his book to get good results. We'll see. I was intrigued because he swears his starter comes from the orginal. So I figures I'd order two types and see if and what the differences might be.

By the time I finished all that, I decided to start on the one sourdough starter that I had. It's a 250 year old starter I purchased from the King Arthur flour site. I should have read ALL the directions because it has several steps for getting it going. I had to stay up till 11pm to do the first halving and feeding, then up again at 3am to do another, and up at 7am for the last. Needless to stay I'm dragging a bit this morning.

After getting the sourdough started I made dinner - a simple fresh roma tomato sauce on linguini. This is a nice, light, vegetarian comfort dish. Here's my recipe for 2:

18 Roma tomatoes blanched, skin removed, and cut in chunks (I cut them vertically into 4 pieces and then cut those horizontally 3 times so I wind up with 12 pieces the right size).
3 large cloves of garlic minced
white wine (about 1/4c -1/2C) I don't measure just hold the bottle down and count 5-6 glugs! LOL
olive oil (I used about 4-5T) I don't measure, just put enough in a very large frying pan to make a nice coating.
fresh chopped basil leaves
fresh oregano or dried to taste
1/2 small jar of capers, drained and rinsed
fresh grated parmesan reggiano cheese
salt and red pepper flakes
1/2 - 3/4 lb linguine depending on how much pasta you like.

Heat the olive oil over med to med high heat. Then add garlic and saute about a minute (don't brown). Add the tomatoes and wine and cook about ten minutes or till you see that they are breaking down and the sauce doesn't look too liquidy. Add salt, red pepper flakes to your liking, the capers and the chopped basil and cook a minute more to heat through. Taste and add more salt and/or red pepper flakes to taste.

It's another no planting day and looks like tomorrow won't be either, so there will be time to trim pots today and maybe do some more throwing.

Time to do something with my finished sour dough starter. I might do the first step in the pizza dough recipe which takes several days to age.

Till later,
June