Here's a sweet little stoneware teapot that I purchased from Michael Cardew on a visit to his studio around 30 years ago give or take a year or two.
Today is another cooking day. For some reason, I arranged my recipe selection to require two days of intense peeling, chopping, slicing and cooking. Yesterday's beef stew took over 6 hrs (the recipe said 1 1/2 hrs), to cook. That must have been the oldest steer in North America; but the new recipe with Porters's beer was wonderful. Thank goodness I started the recipe before noon! Needless to stay, having to hang around the kitchen stirring every 15 minutes for 7 hours kept me out of the studio!
On the menu today is a Tuscan vegetarian stew with cannellini beans, porcini mushrooms, tomatoes, carrots, onion and a lot of chopped kale, 8 cloves of garlic, and vegetable broth,which looks healthy but I'm not sure of the smoky flavor from the porcini mushrooms. I've added a lot more herbs than it called for to give more depth of flavor. Maybe the post cooking sprinkling of parmesan cheese will help.I hope we like it enough to save the leftovers since there's a lot of it! In any case, to help it out the texture of the meal I'll make some garlic bread to go with it.
After lunch I'll be able to get in my studio time. Mugs need handles and some bowls need slipping and decorating.
Till later,
June
