Feeling the heat in LA, both weather- and work-wise. Going through a depressive slump as a result. What's a girl to do to combat the resulting insomnia when crosswords aren't doing the trick? Buy some new cookbooks, that's what!

After a particularly cruddy day at work (and I mean this in the literal sense; omg i'm never going to do anyone a favour again), the satisfaction from opening the Amazon box sitting on my desk was close to that gained from tearing off the wrapping of an anticipated Christmas present. For within the box were two impulse purchases: Harumi's Japanese Cooking and Washoku- recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen.

I spent 20 minutes waiting for my agar to set salivating over the photo and recipe for Buckwheat Noodle Roll, an insane-looking maki sans rice, but made with buckwheat soba. That's definitely one to try one of these weekends.

Happy now...

Madeleines

Ce soir j'attends Madeleine.

J'aime des madeleines. And they're surprisingly easy to make. I simply followed the straight-forward recipe from Epicurious.com with a few modifications. Self-raising flour instead of all-purpose flour plus baking powder due to an unfortunate invasion of weevils in our store cupboard. And vanilla extract in place of the much better vanilla pod. (Sacrilege, I hear you murmur...)

I must say the use of a silicone madeleine tray probably made things easier. I didn't have to butter multiple moulds, nor worry about things sticking. The madeleines popped out easily. And there was only one disastrous batch of darker-than-necessary cakes. (still edible, just not very pretty.)

But critically, they passed the taste test of our French neighbours.

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