Cold Rabbi

It's Saturday, but my humans were up and out of the house quite early this morning. After a quick cooked breakfast - a fried egg sandwich and a fruit smoothy for them, fish and biscuits for me - they left for the farmers' market and the gym. (The gym is a place they go for very short holidays. I know they're going on holiday because they take bags of clothes with them and when they get home these clothes go in the wash. But because these holidays are only about two hours long, they don't need to put us in the cattery.)

As for the farmers' market, I've no idea what that may be, but it must be very strange indeed judging by the stuff they buy there. This week they got something called kohl rabbi. (I thought they said cold rabbi at first but apparently it's a cabbage-like vegetable, and of course kohl is a German word for cabbage.) There is a picture of one above.

Martin bought four of them because they looked so lovely, but now he doesn't know what to do with them. You can eat them raw in salads, apparently, but as a cat I wouldn't be doing that. Indeed as a cat, I wouldn't be eating them at all, but I'm more enthusiastic about the other food they bought at the market. They got two beautiful fillets of sea bass, which I expect are for my dinner as a change from frozen coley, and some langoustine tails, which may also be for me and my sister. They got some bacon, too, and eggs, and some cake.

Anyway, for their dinner tonight they're going to have fideos, which is Spanish pasta cooked like paella. You start by making a sofrito. (That's onions, garlic and tomatoes softened in olive oil. I'm picking up quite a bit of Spanish now my humans are into everything Hispanic, though I'm naturally beter at Catalan, being a cat. Or gat, to use the Catalan word.) Then you put uncooked, broken spaghetti or some other thin pasta into the paella pan with the simmering sofrito, toss it around to absorb the flavours and the oil a bit, then pour on fish stock, bring it to the boil then reduce the fire and let it bubble away until almost all of the liquid has been absorbed. You can add prawns, shellfish, pieces of monkfish, even vegetables, if you must. In Spain they often put squid ink in it so it turns black, but tonight Martin will probably add some saffron. Sounds delicious, but I'm looking forward to the sea bass fillets personally. I think I'm getting the best deal.