Vanilla sables, strawberry millefeuille and NCAA foods

Vanilla butter (vanilla sables) cookies

Today's Food Diary

Breakfast: Muesli

Lunch: Red curry blackbeans with rice (made with tomato paste instead of coconut milk)

Dinner:Pickled herring in garlic sauce with polenta bread

Baking/sweets: vanilla butter (vanilla sables) cookies, polenta onion flatbread

I had been craving for shortbread cookies for a while. I love shortbreads – eating it brings back memories from my university days. Today instead of making a simple shortbread I made vanilla butter (vanilla sables) cookies. I modified Dorie Greenspan’s sables cookies recipe by replacing one egg with two egg yolks and adding vanilla powder and essence, to give the cookies more richness and aroma.

The cookies were crispy, crumbly, aromatic with a sandy texture. Sables does mean sands in French after all. The recipe is posted here

Shortbreads and similar cookies are usually associated with Scotland and few other European countries. Danish butter cookies are quite popular in Asia and the Pacific. I heard that in Kyrgyzstan when butter is made sometimes flour and maybe sugar is added to the pot. The flavour is similar to shortbread cookies. I have never tried this and I don't know how it is consumed. In India flour is cooked in clarified butter and sugar added, yielding shortbread flavours. Perhaps shortbreads or something similar exist in other countries though it is not documented.

Today's Favourite Photo

Source: Everyday Food I Love

Strawberry Millefeuille with Vanilla Custard and Strawberry Black Pepper Coulis

Today’s Favourite Blog

Endless Simmer

Endless Simmer has an interesting article that ranks all 68 NCAA tournament teams by the most popular food eaten. I am not familiar with basketball culture. It is certainly interesting to see the different foods. There are no ‘normal’ items. As expected most of the foods are artery clogging, loaded with cheese and meat. Regular pizzas become cream cheese or mac and cheese pizza. The biggest surprise is contributed by Memphis - BBQ tofu.