Sambal Oelek (Or: 'Who Am I Kidding Sauce')

Pickle. Pickle pickle pickle. Eggplant is your exotic ingredient? Why is this is hilarious to me, why do I love this so? Somehow this alone makes me want you to be my friend, your wit and sparkling personality and everything else aside. I swear I am not making fun of you, I just suspect (reading between the lines of your last post, which seemed more excited about the Whoopie Pies) that you may've felt the same way about this challenge as I did and were too kind to say so.

I swear I did this challenge about two weeks ago, just after I issued it. For the delay in blogging about it, I could plead many excuses (sick kiddos, renovations, too much work ) - but the fact is I remained uninspired by my own challenge. Isn't that sad and horrible?

I made this tofu curry from Epicurious. It was nice. But it was dinner and little else.

This is not the recipe’s fault. It is a friendly and tasty dish, which provides you with an unctuously-sauced dinner. The kind of tofu dinner that lets you feel healthful and spoiled at the same time. We liked it okay.

This is not the Sambal Oelek’s fault. It is a vibrant ruby-orange, sunny and exciting even in appearance. For the princely price of $2.75 (for a jar that I am sure will last me, um, ages), it delivers a pure chile heat with just an edge of sour. Delicious. It has a half-Indonesian half-Dutch name. C’mon, that’s exciting! I like it.

I could whine about the fact that the recipe wasn't really Thai-enough in taste, as it lacked fish sauce. I could blame that for the recipe's failure to transport me.

But what I realized with this was…unless I am baking, I am faking. I tried to issue a wacky cooking challenge to set the tone for our adventures wide and exotic – and I failed. I ‘forgot’ to take a picture, which tells you how excited I was. My life claustrophobia remained in full effect.

Until I cheated on us with the folks over at Tuesdays With Dorie, an intrepid bunch of bakers who are cooking their way straight through my favourite cookbook of last year ‘Baking: From My Home To Yours’. Each Tuesday they post a challenge.

Don't be mad! I am a weak woman. After reading their blogs, I made this sunny, delightful French Yogurt Cake, flavoured deliciously with lots of citrusy lemon. If this won’t sweep away the end-of-winter cobwebs, you need emotional help. This is a delightful recipe, requiring the cook to perform the sensual act of rubbing lemon zest into sugar. This is, apparently, the kind of cake made by the French when they don’t want to visit a patisserie and in France, they measure all of the ingredients out using the sweet little glass pot their yogurt comes in. It honestly took three minutes to bang together (no butter!) and was intensely satisfying to pop in the oven. I felt positively Parisian!

I had a mother-in-law coming over to tea in less than an hour and Mr. Salty reporting no joy on his mission to find lemon marmalade for the intended lemon marmalade glaze, I had to improvise. Filling my square cake with a jar of commercial lemon curd, I whipped up a lemon juice and icing sugar glaze in about thirty seconds and impressed the knee-highs off my mom-in-law.

Today I broke down again and continued my illicit Dorie blog-affair with their last challenge - Blueberry Crumb Cake. This time I got to rub orange zest into sugar. It is WILDLY moist, with crunchy crumbs and loads of nutmeg and cinnamon and I was transported to a seaside New England kitchen and….

Oh, sigh. If you don’t stop me with another challenge, I will move on to the Butter Cookies with coconut and macadamias they all just made this week.

If you want us to go to Bloggers Counseling, I understand. But I think, given that you seem to have made whoopee pies more excitedly than the eggplant thingamajog, you might be on the same page…?

Challenge me!!! I deserve it!!! (I promise that if it is not baking, I will still be enthusiastic. No, for real.)

Love,

Gumdrop