Dining with the Bloggers - October 26th

Surely, there is no stopping me this week! It's Dining with the Blogger's time and for once: I've planned ahead. Usually, I'm running around on Tuesday night (admittedly, sometimes on Wednesday mornings) trying to figure out which one of the oh-so-many bookmarked food blogger recipes I'm to try. This week though - no problemo.

Last Wednesday, Fanny from Food Beam had this wonderfully looking picture (complete with recipe) up of a Pissaladiere. Um, and a-whatta? Pissaladiere. Go see Fanny's post, she'll tell you where it comes from. I never had it before, but it looked so good, and it had been a while since I'd done anything with yeast. I just couldn't get it of my mind. Sweet onions, savory anchovies, salty olives, doughy cushions of bread? Hello! If that doesn't speak heaven to you, well... But when would I have the time to make it?

It turned out I unexpectedly got Friday night off. And is there a better way to spend Friday night than with dough and onions? Dropped by the grocer and bought myself a big bag of organic onions and some yeast, and went home and started the dough. I only made half of Fanny's recipe, afterall it was only me eating. Used about 5 grams of fresh yeast, and dumped everything in the KitchenAid and let that do the work for me. Meanwhile, I chopped and sauteed the onions, ever so slowly, for that meltingly, caramelly texture. I chopped up and mashed a couple of anchovies to use as my paste - I don't know why, but you can get all sorts of brands of anchovies here, rolled around capers and bell peppers, but no paste. I can make it myself then!

As soon as the dough was ready, I divided it in two and assembled the pissaladieres and put them in the oven. When they came out, all golden and lovely, it was all I could do to restrain myself from biting right into one. But I paced myself, not wanting to risk burning the roof of my mouth and not beeing able to taste anything at all.

Pure, savory bliss. The sweet onions, contrasted with the salty and pungent anchovies and olives is just that. Bliss. I would have had a green salad, or maybe a tomato salad on the side, but there was no wasting time, there was just eating. Yum. Simple, yet so good.

Fanny's been working on an alphabet of ingredients, taking beautiful photos of the ingredient, and then doing a recipe with it - a great idea that I'm very sad I didn't come up with!:-) And, well - I knew I should have made something for dessert also...



I reheated the second one the next day, so there's nothing left to send to Cathy - the poor girl has had nothing but reheated beans and things from the freezer this week, and didn't even get to make something delish for DwB...