dromenland.

Went to Ikea today, which I shamefully continue to love because it's so cheap exploitative of cheap third-world labor and because it all seems so smartly designed.

Home improvement goes hand in hand with sustenance, or some other better segue, and one of the things I like about Ottolenghi's Plenty is that it's full of things you've never tasted before. I've probably mentioned this before, but whenever there's a "home improvement day" around Apartment 100M, I typically end up shopping and cooking because I have very few other practical skills unless (joke to be inserted here).

So today while El Carote Negro assembled budget-friendly Ikea shelving, I assembled Ottolenghi's reasonably budget-friendly du puy lentil salad (with gorgonzola and oven-dried tomatoes). It was budget-friendly because the lentils were already here and plus there was a pile of tomatoes sitting around that was about to head south. All I really needed was a sliver of gorgonzola (€1.79/100gr at De Avondmarkt).

As idiosyncratic and interesting as Plenty is, you still have to keep an eye on it sometimes: this recipe called for a bunch of herbs, including lots of dill, and frankly I think Mr. Lenghi sometimes tries to push dill into a couple of places it doesn't really need to be (with equally assertive flavors like gorgonzola for example). So we added the chives the recipe called for and withheld the dill to be served on the side so we could taste it just to make sure we were right in omitting it, and why yes, yes we were.

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