Birds nests, pesto, pasta

Zippy challenged me to make some veggie bird's nests, a la trader joe's. So I did.

I blanched some carrots, then cut them into long julienne strips (thank you, mandoline!) and blanched them some more. I cut an onion into rings and also blanched those. Then I mixed the blanched veggies with little bits of scallion, chili, and ginger.

These were mixed with a batter that was 1/2 c flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp garlic powder, 1/2 tsp turmeric, and 1/2 tsp baking powder; all mixed with cold water until we had a batter that was runny but still slightly glutinous.

We heated up some oil in the frying pan, then filled a lil quarter-cupper nearly full. We emptied this into the hot oil, then cooked for a few minutes on each side.

They needed quite a bit of blotting/draining before serving. We made a sauce out of tamari, rice vinegar, sugar, and sesame oil.

In conclusion, these were delicious, but a little bland, and a little soggier than their frozen delicacy counterparts. Next time I would add more salt and garlic to the batter, as well as maybe more ginger, garlic, chilies to the veggie mix. I would also fry them at the hottest possible temperature for a shorter period of time to avoid the sog factor (not to be confused with hikescotland's bog factor).

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In recent days, I also made some pesto out of every fresh herb I had in the fridge: basil, mint, and parsley. These were blended with ground almonds, garlic, salt, and olive oil for a pesto that is a little bit like a chutney. Recently I also made french fries with truffle oil and fresh mint and parsley; I think this pesto is reminiscent of those.

As luck would have it, I had also just bought some spinach fettuccine (that came in little bundles!), which was totally lovely with my weird pesto.