Drive-by blog post (with knives and Shakespeare)!

Not much blogging out of me this week, because I have a friend staying in my spare room (the one where the computer is), so I’ve been too busy doing friend catching-up stuff to write much.  Also, it’s rude to sit there typing when someone is trying to sleep…

But I had to post briefly about my new knives, because they are sharp and awesome and the other reason I don’t want to type much is that I’m doing a very fine job of slicing up my fingers with them.  This is not the fault of the knives – I’m just not used to having ones which will cut things as soon as look at them (my old knives were pacifists, and some of them had conscientious objections to cutting vegetables.  Or anything, really.  Though not, apparently, to cutting me.), so I have all these bad, bad, knife habits, and as a result all our meals this week are very high in protein.  But they are lovely, lovely knives, and it is wonderful (when I am not indulging in accidental acts of self-harm) to be able to slice through something just using the pressure of my fingertips, not my whole arm from the shoulder.

Reflecting on that particular image, I can’t help suspecting I’m lucky I still have all my fingers.  And arms.

(Oh, they are Scanpan knives, if anyone is interested.  So far, I really do recommend them – they are beautifully weighted, and slice like a dream.)

In other culinary news, we are doing Much Ado About Nothing tomorrow, so I’m cooking like a maniac, again.   So far, I’m focusing on sweets – orange jelly (civil as an orange, and something of that jealous complexion), Florentines (for that young Florentine named Claudio), jam-filled heart biscuits (a double heart for his single one), meringues (because Hero is nothing if not sweet), chocolate and beetroot cake (for Beatrice – or should that be Beetrice?), and Rocky Road, because I just wanted to make it again.  Also, because the path of true love never did run smooth (though that quote comes from a Midsummer Night’s Dream).

Savouries are currently looking like stuffed mushrooms (for Benedick, who is stuffed with fine qualities – a stuffed man), roast chicken with garlic and potatoes (because Hero is constantly being referred to as someone’s chick, and also because of all the fowl play), a Renaissance Garden salad, to represent the orchard people keep hiding from each other in, and a lot of lovely, vaguely Italian things, like tomato salad, olives, marinated peppers and eggplants, baked ricotta, and bread.

… all of which I really should get back to, in fact.  I promise a more substantial post to follow in the near future – probably the recipe for chocolate and beetroot cake, which (if the batter is any indicator) is going to be unbelievably good, and also vegan.