Tuesdays With Dorie – Not-Just-For-Thanksgiving Cranberry Shortbread Cake (and Roma Artichoke & Tomato Ragu) (and Leeks with Bel Paese) (and parenthetical statements)

I made some stuff!

The cranberry shortbread cake is nothing short of amazing. The physics of the cake…just yowza. I guess it comes from handling/mixing the batter very minimally, but it’s quite good. The addition of oranges to the cranberry jam made this cake go from good to great.

I also made two very disappointing foods for a recent meal. Roma Artichoke & Tomato Ragu and Leeks with Bel Paese. The ragu (as described in this recipe from a vegetarian cookbook) does not come close to the typical definition of ragu (meat sauce). Obviously vegetarian, but also served cold or at room temp. I can get over that, whatevs, whatevs. But it’s super strong. The recipe calls for you to dump not just marinated artichokes into it, but also all of the salty brine oil. It’s very strong and very acidic and not very good. We have a set of notecards with recipes on them, and this notecard got thrown away.

The other recipe, leeks with Bel Paese, was just so-so. It actually helped cut the flavor of the ragu pretty nicely, but it turns out that Rachel and I just aren’t big leek people. I don’t think I like them as the main event, although they definitely have their place in other recipes. The Bel Paese cheese was nice and mild and complimented the leeks very well. We kept this notecard but will probably think twice about making it again.

DONE WITH FOOD. I don’t really have a very good venue for non-food-related stuff, so I’m just gonna keep going and see what happens.

As always I’ve been reading some comic books. I wait for stuff in trade paperback and only started reading comics a little over a year ago, so my comics are scattered between new and old. I usually alternate: DC, Marvel, independent.

I finished Grant Morrison’s run on JLA last week in Vol. 6: “World War III.” I’m not much one for massive team-ups. My favorite JLA stories are ones where they split up into smaller groups. That way, they can focus more on character and less on insane action. The more heroes that are involved, the more difficult things get for me to understand. DC’s “Crisis” series are virtually incomprehensible.

“JLA: World War III” does a decent job with balance. There’s a nice one-off story with Hal Jordan/Spectre. The battles are balanced. There are nice character moments for Green Lantern, and a great Batman/Superman finale.

I also read “Secret Invasion: Fantastic 4.” This was my first Fantastic Four comic, and I’m sure I could have chosen a lot better than this. This was a tie-in to an event that I know very little about (aside from the Secret Invasion: Spider-Man series I read, which oddly did not have Spider-Man in it). It was decent enough. Two of the Fantastic Four were absent. The story seemed to rely on some familiarity with past storylines, but thankfully the book gave enough background and was also padded with a few past issues that explain things. Probably not worth reading again unless I get into “Secret Invasion” proper and want to see how things fit in.

Finally, I read a novel called “The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey,” an illustrated collection of Jewish folklore and wisdom as told by a wild west rabbi. I got this book for $0.25 at a library book sale, but knowing how good it is, I’d probably have paid cover price for it. It’s a really quick read, and it’s funny and folksy.

By the way, the new “Avengers” toon on Disney XD is quite good, and “Batman: The Brave and the Bold” is holding up its quality level on the Cartoon Network.

On the non-comic front, I got a bunch of new CDs for my birthday on Saturday. So far I’ve listened to the new Ben Folds/Nick Hornby album, “Lonely Avenue” (really great, stand-out tracks on first listen are “Levi Johnston’s Blues” and “Belinda”). I also listened to Sufjan Stevens’s “The Age of Adz,” and it took me a little to get into it but by the end I was all about it (even the 25-minute track with autotune solos).

I’ve still gotta get through a couple of recent Weezer albums, Giacchino’s score for “Lost Season 4,” Elfman’s score for “The Wolfman,” and the new Belle and Sebastian disc. I also got Lego Rock Band, so Rachel and I will be drumming/singing (respectively) to a whole bunch of new songs including the Ghostbuster theme song.

So that’s what I get. I hope you bakers like longwinded digression into dweeb topics, because that’ll probably be here to stay for a while. I cut out personal stuff long ago because I figured people don’t care, but I care and I pay for webhosting, so eat a hat. If you like food, just read the top of posts. If you come here for funny, that’s dumb; go to my Twitter instead, where there are metric tons of jokes. If you’re looking for naked pictures,