baby shower

We had a potluck/baby shower for Elmira at work yesterday. It wasn't my usual weekend to work, so Elmira hadn't been expecting me to be there. When she saw me she was horrified, and said if she'd known I was coming she'd have left the meat out of her otherwise yummy-looking rice pilaf. It was made of basmati with tomatoes, string beans, and some kind of mammal flesh.



I made her these baby socks out of non-vegetarian yarn (Tofutsies, which includes chitin for its supposed antibacterial properties) because it was the most unisex of the machine-washable fingering-weight yarns at the Weaving Works.



I got up at 3:30 to make Moroccan apple salad



and Lebanese eggplant purée, both from Arabesque,



along with some little Turkish breads to eat them with.



Turkish Pides

Sponge
375g/3C all-purpose flour
3C water
1/8t instant yeast

Dough
the sponge
500g/4C flour
1.5T salt
1/3C olive oil
1t yeast

The morning before you plan to bake, mix the sponge ingredients together, cover, and let rest till you're about to go to bed that night. Then add the dough ingredients and knead till nicely elastic(it should be a pretty soft, well-hydrated dough). Cover back up and let rise while you sleep.

When you get up, set your oven (with your baking stone on an upper shelf) to 450ºF. Scrape the dough out onto a well-floured surface and divide into 40 pieces. Round them into little balls, and let rest for half an hour.



Stretch them into discs with the middles thinner than the outside edges, so they look like big, pale red blood cells. Arrange them on a piece of parchment paper (you should be able to fit 12-15 on a cookie sheet-sized piece) and slide them onto the hot baking stone.



Bake for about 7 minutes.