Rhapsodies

I’ve been trying to do more recipe’s lately mainly because even going to the cheapest restaurants add up quickly and to the other extreme while living on frozen chicken is technically a good diet it’s not what I’d call a great diet.

So I’ve been making a point of trying something interesting at least once a week as a way to improve my skills as well as I’ve found it’s easier to stock you refrigerator when your list is based around some sort of strategy as opposed to the usual impulse buys.

The challenge is to find something interesting while keeping things economical to spell that out one of my favorite shepherd’s pie recipe by Alton Brown calls for actual lamb, something I’ve yet to find for under eight dollars a pound in this town.

Anyway today I did Flaky Mushroom Pastries from the webpage Food Through The Pages a site that hypothesizes the recipes for food mentioned in all the books we love. I decided to try this one because first I really enjoyed the Gentleman Bastards series it came from and second because I love mushrooms.

I’d been putting it off because of the puff pastry but I happened to stumble over it while shopping at Trader Joe’s for a  good price and grabbed it. Puff Pastry is something I’ve been avoiding because it seems overly complex like working with explosives but ultimately fairly easy. Even when the instructions in the recipe are rather vague on the details. But once I got over the initial panic it turned out to be pretty idiot proof. All in all other than burning the bottom it turned out quite well.