Results - Fresh tomato Broth with Saffron, Ricotta Fritter

Has anyone else noticed that I seem to be cooking alot of "balls"? For some reason I seem to be attracted to spherical shaped food items, and you know what?.....I'm not complaining. How can you not love ball shaped food, they're easy to handle, are oh so cute and fit nicely in your mouth.....wait, am I still talking about food? Maybe I should get back on track.

First lets talk about the taste. I made the broth and decided to serve it at room temperature, not warmed or chilled like the recipe suggested. It was a pretty warm day when I made it so the soup temperature was just right. All of the flavors blended together reminded me of warm summer day, fresh coriander, tomato, a hint of chili and the freshness of lemongrass . My only problem is that for some reason tomato soups/broths always cling to the back of my throat and give me an unpleasant sharp feeling. I enjoyed the first 5 or 6 mouth fulls, but then I was over it. I did however love the ricotta balls, so cute and tasty. I will definitely be making the fritters again, but as small finger food to kick start a party.

Onto the actual recipe, it could not have been easier. Put everything in a pot and let it reduce, you don't need any skill for that. I was a little concerned at the end of the cooking time when I noticed that the whole process only made about a cup full of broth. I only made a half serve, but that wasn't enough for one person let alone two. So I decided to deviate away from the recipe and crushed the veggies while they were still sitting in my strainer and that seemed to extract some extra juice. I managed to squeeze out more than a few extra serves, so that fixed my problem. I ended up with a lot more tomato pulp but the second straining took care of any extra tomato bits.

Before cooking

After cooking

The ricotta balls were even easier. The only difficult part was waiting for the batter to be ready, and that was only difficult because I've always had a issue with patience. At the end of all the frying I was left with a fair bit of batter, so I decided to whack in a heap of cracked pepper, a little extra slat and make little salt and pepper beignet...oh they were so yummy! Might throw in some cheese next time and make cheese and black pepper balls. I've decided that Jacques Reymond is the batter king, so far anything that I've cooked involving flour and liquid has turned out to be awesome. At the end of this, I might turn into a batter ball myself!

ABOVE PLUS BELOW

EQUALS =

So, we've eaten the appetizers and now we've consumed the consommé, I guess next is the main attraction. And guess what? I haven't even worked out what its going to be!! I think I will have look through the book again........maybe after dinner though.