Still Life, With Cats

Since I know I missed a day this week, today you get two citrus recipes. First, in the morning I set up the dough for Lemon Buns. These are a yeasted dinner roll sort of affair, but with lemon zest in the dough, and also brushed with a mix of zest and butter both before and after the bake. I thought the recipe sounded intriguing, and these are the sort of thing that freeze well, so I made the full batch.

They’re baked in round pans, 10 per pan (and the assembly fits perfectly into a freezer bag, which is where the second pan went immediately after it was cooled).

They look pretty, all golden brown and brushed with bits of lemon zest, but aside from being a perfectly soft and lovely dinner roll, you would never guess (if you weren’t told) that there was lemon in them. So on the plus side, at least they’ll go with anything a normal dinner roll would, but on the downside, I admit I was hoping for at least a hint of that lemon.

We had them alongside Salmon with Dill Sauce and Lemon Risotto for dinner. Richard mixed up the dill sauce while I worked on the risotto, ladling hot broth into the pan and stirring and stirring and stirring until it was all fully cooked. I think I have made risotto before (?), but it is the sort of thing that, to me, always seems unnecessarily tedious.

The salmon is simply seasoned with a little salt and pepper and then cooked. We’d originally planned to have this with a side of broccoli, as a nod to health, but upon taking the bag of broccoli from the fridge to prepare it, I discovered that it was squishy, and not in a good way, so….another plate of all the tones of beige it is!

Verdict – the fish was cooked perfectly (phew!), and everything was absolutely delicious, although I felt like overall it was a bit on the heavy side (and I found myself really wishing that we’d had the broccoli to help lighten it up).

Citrus used: 2 lemon

Total citrus used so far: 1 mandarin orange, 10 tangelos, 8 lemons

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.

What better way to start the week then with a healthy breakfast? How about something where you cook some oats in orange juice and then bake it into a cake?

I saw the recipe for Orange Oat Breakfast Cake and was intrigued. You first cook the oats in the orange juice (which is…not the most delightful smell), then you stir together all the other ingredients and fold in the cooked oats. The recipe called for a 5 inch pan, which I don’t have, so instead I divided it between two of my four-inch springform pans, and that worked perfectly.

Sometimes things like this can come across as very earnestly ‘healthy’, but this was actually pretty good. We split one of the little cakes for breakfast this morning and the second one will be breakfast tomorrow.

Along with the breakfast cake this morning, I also made Lemon Orzo Soup for dinner. This was originally planned for last night but time got away from us.

I first made this soup back in 2019 (for Thingadailies), and it’s been in our winter rotation ever since. It’s fairly quick to make (I usually just beat the egg whites by hand to avoid dirtying yet another bowl), and we always add a couple carrots, peeled and sliced, to sneak in some extra veggies. And bonus, it makes enough for lunches for the next few days.

Citrus used: 2 tangelos and 1 lemon

Total citrus used so far: 12 tangelos, 5 lemons

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.