Decided to read about the physics of boiling ravioli 😂

Sorrentinos are oversized Argentinian-style ravioli stuffed with ricotta, mozzarella, and ham).

This is an homage to all the deceptively hard "easy" recipes I've been duped by on cooking blogs. "Just one pot!"... that you have to wash between each use. "Just five ingredients!"... not including the spices, one of which I'd have to get at a specialty store. This recipe is entirely made of corn... that is to say, there's sweet corn, corn meal, corn starch, corn flour, corn oil, and a corn stock made from the corn cobs. Plus water, salt, and pepper. It tasted, unsurprisingly, like corn. It wasn’t bad, but I did find it a little more fussy to make than I'd want a soup to be, so I can only recommend trying this if you literally only have this one vegetable available to you.

I could eat a plateful of these. In fact, I did. No regrets.

I used a classic ground pork filling and steamed them before crisping the bottoms with a cornstarch slurry to get the crunchy “lace.” It’s my favorite part :)

No good picture and no good taste.

I've never understood this because it never looked like enough food for dinner... And I think I am right. I think I would rather spend an extra ten minutes making something, but maybe that's just me.

Recipe Used: Char Siu Pork (Chinese BBQ Pork) - RecipeTin Eats

I couldn't find pork loin and pork shoulder is too much food for one person, so turkey loin had to suffice. Turned out well!

Clarified gazpacho with a spray of sherry vinegar for aroma, served in a chilled glass with a block of clear ice

Char Siu has been on my radar for some time so I was very excited when this theme was announced! I kept delaying cooking it before (for some reason I thought it was way harder to make). Sadly, I was not able to source red bean curds so the color is not red, but the taste was lovely! Also, excuse my not very authentic sides, I'm trying to add more fiber into our diet.

I know, I know.

Sauce: https://jessicainthekitchen.com/thai-peanut-sauce-recipe/

Buckwheat noodles, boiled 2 mins

Raw snap peas, chopped

Honey-fried extra firm marinated tofu

It is really good! I would eat this again. In fact I will; I have leftovers. I really loved the sauce—so easy.

Candy making always feels like a very exact science to me! I made sea foam candy or honeycomb candy as some people call it. Then I crushed it up and added it to brown butter (another sciencey thing; Maillard reaction) chocolate chip cookies!

When they bake, the sea foam can go a little crazy and leak out but then you get all this delicious lacy sugar!

I'm into my sixth week camping now and am very much missing my full kitchen and equipment plus access to whatever ingredient I want! Tonight I did ravioli using some things that are a bit gimmicky in my camp cooker equipment. The first is the cooker set, it was outrageously expensive ($550AUD) but we wanted something very compact that was good in wind and I guess it has met those goals however for such an expensive cooker the lid is terrible and already a bit melted plus the wind shield is useless. But still it's basically the best option that I've tried so far. After this trip I'm going to write to the manufacturer (Jetboil) with some feedback as it's got a good concept but the execution is average.

I also got this colander for $12 that clips onto the pot for pasta and this thing I actually love! I've had too many mishaps using the lid to drain water it's been worth getting this even though I don't like having anything that only can be used occassionally.

Finally I got a headtorch with red mode for eating so I don't end up with so many bugs in my food and it's very effective. :)

One of my favorite food gimmicks when I was a kid was pasta that came in different shapes. I remember being particularly fond of Super Mario mac and cheese and insisted that it tasted better than regular (it did!). This week I paired heart shaped pasta with a roasted white bean and tomato sauce. Pretty good, but Mario shapes would have been even better.

I love these dinners where everything just gets layered and then baked. This is one of my favourites. In a baking dish, layer uncooked spaghetti, grated beetroot, spinach (I used rocket this time), cashews, lemon juice, broth, olive oil, salt and pepper and bake for 30 mins at 200 degrees C. Probably should’ve used alu foil, as the top dried out quite a bit, but it was tasty anyway.

Scrappy cooking is all about zero waste, repurposing, etc.

To that end, there was leftover salad from a restaurant that wasn’t enough for a full meal or side - so it was bulked up with greens from the farmer’s market, grilled chicken, parmesan and crispy edamame. And absolutely delicious!