Ottolenghi - curse, challenge or waste of time?

I know most of you will be thinking “Why bother?” I like a culinary challenge I suppose.

Well the recipe said it took 35 mins prep and 1 hour 15 to cook. Maybe an army of minions prepped it. It must have taken me about that length of time to assemble all the ingredients, read the lengthy recipe, and forage in the over-grown herb area of the garden for what oregano I could find. I had no panko breadcrumbs so made some with sour dough. It also required cooked brown rice which I had done the day before.

The collage starts in the bottom right - 2 pans on the go, plus ingredients ready. Bottom Middle is adding the mushrooms, garlic and soy sauce to the onion and carrot already cooked.
This all had to be left to cool.
I had to fry the oregano leaves and strain off the oil so they stayed crisp. I melted my wee sieve.
While the mushroom mix cooled we went to see Ella on her birthday. On our return at 6.10 I added the pine nuts, Parmesan, chilli, egg, breadcrumbs and parsley to the mix and made the balls. He did say to make sure they were firmly compacted, and at later stages ‘gently turning them”, “carefully transferring” etc so i did take that to mean they’d be very likely to fall to bits when I even looked at them. Despite my best efforts, half of them did.

Around 7 they were ready, and were so tasty Mr C decided they warranted a bottle of his good red. But I won’t be making them again.

Ailie and I managed 6 miles round the moor before the arrival of Dougal or Duncan or whatever this storm is called. Our local councillor has succeeded in getting Northern Powergrid to supple a generator for the village hall where we can go to get hot food, charge appliances and warm ourselves if power gets outraged again.