Tamarind Dreams

The End.

2009-12-13T15:21:00.000-08:00

As you may have deduced the project is finished, all chapters are complete. I'll be making some of the recipes again going forward. For example, I have a date with a certain chocolate amaretto ice cream for a friend's birthday. And while I feel a certain sense of accomplishment, I think I'm also not sure what the future for this blog is. I don't know what capacity I'd want to continue it in, if any.

Time will tell. In the meantime hooray for being finished!

Meatcentric.

2009-12-06T16:52:00.000-08:00

Whew! Things have been busy. Between work and cooking project (homemade venison jerky, homemade kahlua) there's been hardly any time to update this here space.

Anyways, here are my favorites of the meat section in Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet. This portion took the longest and drained the most energy out of me, I'm afraid.

Linguini with veal ragu. Yummy creamy goodness.

The short ribs, albeit salty were good.

The pork tenderloin with dates and water chestnuts. I love that sauce specifically.

Lettuce cups with curried beef (er.. venison) was tasty.

Lamb meatballs were quite decent also (with my modifications, that is) and might be nice to make again for the winter season.

While the lamb shanks was the most disappointing meal in this section.

That wraps it up for meat. The last section to be completed in the cookbook!

Beef Brisket Braised in Red Wine, Wrapped in Bacon. Page 158.

2009-11-28T15:12:00.000-08:00

For Thanksgiving this year we went camping and I made the final recipe in Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet to bring along. This cookbook has been my culinary companion since February and it seems a little unreal to be finished with all the recipes. But here we are.

To begin, I purchased a 4 lb brisket at the Farmer's Market. The recipe asked for a 3 lb one, but all I could get was the quad pounder so I then marinated the thing in a bottle of Chianti turning once halfway through so I could get all the sides soaked in my small casserole dish.

Once ready to proceed with the preparation, I cooked a whole package of bacon until somewhat done, but not crispy. The marinated meat got patted dry and browned on both sides in the rendered bacon fat. Around this time I also cut up a red onion, celery, carrots and fennel.

For the roasting portion I deviated a bit from Padma's instructions. She asks for the cut veggies to be added around the meat at the start of roasting, and for the whole thing to be baked for 3.5-4 hours. I didn't want the veggies to get overdone though so I roasted the meat on it's own, topped with bacon and sitting in the red wine marinade, for 1 hour at 300.

Meanwhile, some of the veggies got briefly sauteed in butter. Padma asks for all of them to be cooked in the butter, but I only did the onions and garlic primarily.

During that first hour of roasting I consulted Joy of Cooking and encouraged by that knowledgeable source and feeling pressed for time I upped the oven temp to 350 and roasted the brisket wrapped in bacon, nestled in the veggies for 2 more hours.

After 3 hours it was time to get in the car and drive to Inks Lake so I tucked the foil wrapped roasting pan in a canvas bag to keep warm. And in the rush to pack things up I forgot to take a photo of the cooked meat! At the camp site I warmed the meal for about an hour over the charcoal fueled grill but sadly it was a bit tough even so. There is a reason good bbq is not easy to make. It takes time and know-how to roast beef well and this being my first attempt I didn't have either, unfortunately. By my estimation I really should have roasted the meat for a good 4.5-5 hours to get it falling apart tender. As it is the flavor was fine. Beefy with a nice layer of fat. The sauce left something to be desired though. Padma has this habit of asking for meat to be cooked in wine with watery vegetables and lacking flour, or starch to thicken it. And by the time you have a whole bottle of wine plus all the exuded vegetable juice it was just too much liquid. I would like to do some research on the classic Italian brisket in Barolo, as this recipe is based on it, but it will probably be some time until I attempt a big slab of meat kind of meal again.

Pork Tenderloin with Orange Glace. Page 164.

2009-11-21T13:21:00.000-08:00

In the homestretch is where it gets the hardest. Add to that a new job and a pretty complete change in schedule, weekends off now (which is completely wonderful and something I've been wanting for a while) but it is a bit tough on the cooking though as it involves camping and hiking and doing fun stuff on days off, instead of cooking so much. But I'll find my groove I'm sure. I think after we got back from Fiji I've just been ready to be done with this project. To that end I made this pork dish this week and then there's only 1 more recipe left, for which I have most of the main ingredients already. Glory be!

So to make this meal I first sourced some orange glace slices. I was planning on making my own with corn syrup and sugar, but I saw these at Central Market and well laziness prevailed.

The rest was pretty easy. I bought a farmer's market pork tenderloin which I marinated in white wine.

I seared it in a stainless skillet then nestled in a dutch oven with briefly sauteed veggies, dried herbs and cut up glaceed orange slices. I made an executive decision to omit the preserved lemon. Honestly it is not my favorite taste and I threw out the last one I had some time back. I baked this, covered, at 325 degrees for 1 hour (not 2 as Padma specifies). The meat came out super tender and flavorful. The carrots still had a nice al dente texture to them. To counter the sweetness of the oranges I squeezed fresh lemon juice on top.

Overall this dish had a pleasant, not-too-sweet marmalade taste, although I found the white wine sauce to be rather thin. Dredging the loin in flour before browning it would have helped to thicken the sauce as it cooked and give it more structure.

Cassoulet with Beef. Page 150. Part 2.

2009-11-18T13:10:00.000-08:00

I've never eaten cassoulet before. I hear it involves a good bit of cooking time, lots of meat and separately prepared duck confit. The duck confit I've sampled in the past and it's tasty, while being very rich.

This recipe goes in a different direction with no pork products and no duck, but it's interesting in it's own way.

The preparation started some time ago with the veal stock, and the rest of the ingredients ran to 2 pages. It seemed to take me a while to have everything available at home at the same time. Once I did, I started by chopping fresh veggies and freshly purchased meat, a veal chop, beef shank and merguez sausage.

Then I basically browned the various meat in turns, took it out, sauteed the veggies and added the mostly cut-up protens back in along with the veal stock and a crapload of flavorings including dried omani lemons and tomato paste. My poor 4.5 dutch oven was not big enough for the task of so much meat and overflowed even before I put the veal chop and beans in. I ended up transfering the whole mess to a bigger stockpot and simmering for approximately 2 hours, adding canned cannellini beans almost at the end.

Never having partaken of traditional French cassoulet before I can't judge the merits of this dish as an example of that style of preparation, however as a stew with lots of meat, beans and veggies it was good, albeit a bit complicated. I perhaps made it more so by making my own stock. Even then, there were a ton of ingredients and while the flavor was rich and hearty, perfectly salted and seasoned I'm not sure I would go through the trouble of making this again. I should also note that after the lamb shank disappointment, I didn't add any olives to this as requested by Padma. And tasting the final result I don't see that the green briny things would have added anything to the taste. It just seems a bizarre suggestion.

To anyone attempting this at home, I would say get ready to spend a good amount of money on the meat (veal isn't cheap!) plus allow a few free hours to prepare the meal.

Lamb Meatballs Simmered in Creamy Spinach Sauce. Page 160.

2009-11-04T15:32:00.000-08:00

This was the first Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet recipe I made once we returned from Fiji. Given the cautious reviews written on Amazon, I made a couple of modifications and ended up with really good results. First, I used only 2 cups of liquid instead of the 4+ Padma asks for and secondly I added less spinach.

I began by making the lamb meatballs, this part of the recipe to a tee with the exception of cilantro. Jeff doesn't like it and I was feeling a bit of laziness over gathering some from the garden anyway. I put these in the fridge to chill for a bit.

Once the meatballs had sufficiently cooled I put together a simmering sauce of various spices, a small can of tomato sauce and 2 cups of water with a bouillon cube dissolved in it.

I finished the dish by adding chopped tomatoes, fresh spinach (12 oz instead of the recommended 1 lb) and yogurt.

We enjoyed this meal quite a bit as prepared. The meatballs were super tender, having been simmered in the flavorful sauce, although not very spicy. The sauce itself was creamy and fragrant. A tasty and comforting cold weather meal with rice. To anyone owning Padma's cookbook I would advise to make the recipe and simply use half the liquid. I wonder if that part was an editing mistake? On the spinach issue, 12 oz was plenty for me, but I don't think it would ruin the dish to use a full pound. Oh and I topped my portion with some chopped cilantro but it would surely be nice inside the meatballs for extra flavor.

Flowers of Fiji.

2009-10-30T19:37:00.000-07:00

Fruits of Fiji.

2009-10-27T19:26:00.000-07:00

The cutest of pineapples.

A cluster of bananas.

Arbitrary seeming pricing on those bananas at the Suva market.

Mystery fruit. I tried to eat it but Jeff wouldn't let me.

Papaya growing in trees that seemed to be everywhere. Known as 'paw-paw' in local speak.

In a pickle.

2009-10-23T10:05:00.000-07:00

Coming back from Fiji and sleeping off accumulated jet lag. Here's a little something to keep you occupied until I return to the use of my kitchen.

The pickle and relish section was a vital one as many sauces were integral to the making of other recipes in Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet. It also might have been the most exotic, with flavors that have never graced my lips before (and not in a good way). See previous exhibit: lemon pickle.

My first and true love of the chutneys is the mouth-tinglingly hot chipotle and date concoction. I've made it at least 3 times now and it never fails to amaze. Tasty with chips and salsa, plus maybe some refried beans mixed in, tangy and spicy with pan-fried chicken (or even shrimp, as I made on one occasion).

Of the mint chutneys, both the apple/mint variation and the mint/date combo are fresh and light. Versatile salsas that go equally well with pita chips or fresh seafood.

I might have said it before, and I'll say it again that the recipe for the chipotle sauce is worth the purchase of the entire book. Yes, it's that amazing. At least to me. And to be quite honest I've changed it around a bit since the first time I made it. It's now simpler to put together and less sweet. Here is my version:

In a blender, combine:

10 dried dates

2 large tomatoes

13 oz canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (I use 2 little cans and it works great)

2 cloves garlic

1 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons honey (up to 1/3 cup depending on taste). *Try it first with 3 tbsp and add more honey if a sweeter taste is desired.

1/4 cup water

Blend the whole mixture until smooth. You can add more water, a little at a time, if needed or if you want a thinner consistency. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and cook on medium-low heat for about 5-7 minutes. Cool the sauce then pour into a clean glass jar. Keeps in the fridge for a long time. Enjoy as sauce, glaze or marinade.

Tangerine Peel Pickle. Page 252.

2009-10-19T14:22:00.000-07:00

This was the last Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet recipe I cooked before we left for Fiji. Enjoy!

To start, I denuded 3 tangerines of their skins. I used Mineola tangelos since that's what the store had and peeled only the orange parts. The skins got cut into thin slivers which actually took longer than expected.

Then I toasted fenugreek seeds, sesame seeds and urad lentils in a dry skillet. Meanwhile a knob of tamarind was soaking in boiling water.

I pureed the lentil/seed mixture while heating a separate skillet and sauteeing some mustard seeds, then adding the peel slivers, ginger and some Thai chilies. I poured in the tamarind water along with turmeric and jaggery (raw cane sugar), finishing off with the ground flavorings and pan-frying till it all got thick and cooked down.

I allowed the pickle to cool then stored in a clean glass jar. The one nice thing I can say about the taste is that it's better than the other whole citrus recipes I've prepared from the cookbook. The taste here is much less assertive than the preserved lemon, a marriage of slightly sour and sweet, punctuated by the barest necessary flavorings of Indian spices and salt. I want to use the word complex. And indeed, I can imagine this as a mysterious chutney or side accompaniment to a pork, chicken or fish dish. It isn't my favorite chutney recipe, but it does have redeeming qualities. The chilies gave a nice heat, although I wouldn't mind having even more spice on the tongue. Padma does discuss using this as an accompaniment to other dishes and in meal preparation, and I'd love to experiment more with this when I return to the use of my kitchen. Perhaps a pan-fried shrimp or fish meal with this tangerine peel pickle.

Cranberry Chutney. Page 254.

2009-10-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

Still in Fiji, probably in or around the Blue Lagoon area by now. Enjoy this while I'm gone.

Since I was playing around with chutneys I defrosted a bag of cranberries I had in the freezer and whipped together this little beauty.

I set the berries with sugar to cooking on the stove, in a dutch oven, at low heat.

Meanwhile, I toasted some fenugreek seeds and ground them up.

After a while I added the spices and cooked a bit longer until the mixture turned into a thick paste.

I cooled it and scooped into a glass jar to keep in the fridge.

This is a unique take on that Thanksgiving classic, the cranberry relish. They're so easy to make I don't understand why people go for that gloppy canned stuff. Although as I kid I rather liked the weird jelliness of a whole can of what is basically sweet cranberry puree. Padma's version here, or more accurately her Aunt's, has a nice subtle spice to it. You can tell there are Indian flavorings but they're not overpowering. I imagine this chutney would be great with a turkey sandwich, but I haven't yet bought any gobbler meat to find out.

Lemon Pickle. Page 247.

2009-10-07T09:39:00.000-07:00

I'm cavorting in Fiji but so as not to leave you all alone while I'm gone here's my write-up on the lemon pickle.

6 months has come and gone since I started on this culinary journey. I know Jeff will not be pleased when the list of recipes is exhausted and he's back to eating rice and beans, but for today let's address the elephant in the jar. When I canned these lemons with salt back in February (those cooler early spring times) I wrote the date 2/25 on the top lid and so around 8/25 give or take a couple of days I dug deep and made this ah... curiosity of a dish.

I started by dumping out the lemon slices. The previous 180 days had not been kind to them. They are more brown and soft than the photo would have you believe. And the juices combined with salt had turned into a kind of syrup.

I ground up a mixture of spices in my handy dandy coffee/spice grinder.

And toasted the powder in a dutch oven.

I took the pot off the heat, stirred in the lemons and combined well.

What resulted is certainly sour, but more than that it is incredibly salty. Like taking a giant swig out of the Dead Sea (or what I imagine that would be like never having been). Padma writes that in India this pickle is served as an accompaniment to most meals and I can see how perhaps if I had grown up with this concoction I'd have more tolerance for it. As it is, I tried a couple of bites to get an idea of taste and made Jeff do the same when he got home and then in the trash it went. When people say something is an acquired taste they haven't yet tasted this pickle. And I don't recommend they do.

Chicken Run.

2009-10-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

A lot of stuff is happening this week. We got married for one! At the justice of the peace, if you'd like to know. I'm packing for Fiji (leaving on Sunday!). 2 friends have a birthday this weekend. I'm trying to figure out how to best amuse them after dinner. Crazy/fun/exciting things, all of them. In the midst of it all I'm rating the chicken dinners I've made from Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet.

I think my absolute favorite is the Moroccan chicken pie. Big hit at home and party.

Others worth mentioning and making:

Chicken for the bold. I've written about my love affair with the chipotle date chutney already. You must be sick of it. But it's really that good.
Chicken ala Nueces.
Two Hens Laughing. I'd really like to make this again without the asafetida and less salt. The glaze particularly, is to die for, even if you leave out the stuffing.

And, I would say the most ill advised recipe prize goes to the Red Stripe chicken. Do. Not. Make. It.

Nuff said, I'm off to Fiji!

Krispy Fried Chicken. Page 134.

2009-09-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

We are really dipping into the bottom of the barrel, scraping the dregs of the remaining cookbook recipes. Making things I wouldn't ordinarily try. Fried chicken for one. For me, it is a seldom indulged-in guilty pleasure. Add to that my deep dislike of deep frying, and that sums up the reasons why this is the last chicken dish to be made from Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet. But cooked it had to be so here we go.

First, I soaked a cut-up 4 pound locally raised bird in a mixture of whole milk and salt. Some recipes for fried chicken online use a salt brine to marinate the chicken, others use milk (or buttermilk). This recipe combines both and I have to tell you, results in nicely moist evenly salted meat. So the chicken parts soaked while I went to work.

When I got back home I put together a dredging mixture of flour, crushed saltines, rice krispy cereal (therefore the title) plus salt, ground amchoor and cayenne.

I also beat 2 eggs and set up my dredging station next to the stove.

I dredged each piece in the flour once, then in the beaten eggs then in the flour mixture once again. Then deep-fried 2 pieces at a time. Or I should say, shallow-fried. Instead of the quart or so of oil required in a typical deep fry recipe, Padma asks for only 1.5 cups of oil (I used grapeseed) and 2 sticks of butter (plus I threw in some melted congealed butter leftover from another recipe). It's an interesting way of doing it. I still tried to use my candy/fry thermomether to make sure the oil didn't get too hot.

Each batch of 2 pieces was fried 5 to 10 minutes on each side, until nicely golden brown.

Once fried, I set each piece on paper towels to absorb the grease, then kept warm in the oven. A couple of the pieces did not appear fully cooked when cut into so I baked those in a 400 degree oven for 10-15 minutes. So, how did it taste? Well, this chicken was extremely buttery and tender. The crust was thick and crunchy, the double dipping really helped with adhering the batter to it. Inside, perfectly tender and well salted (the breasts were a touch dry but that's to be expected). Overall a very good version of a classic Southern recipe. But nothing about it was different or exotic. The puny 1 tsp of cayenne didn't add anything. There was absolutely no kick to this fryer. If I had know it would be so mild I'd have added some dried ground habaneros which pack a powerful punch. And the amchoor. Is that to balance the fattiness of the oil and butter? Not sure. But I couldn't taste it either.

Despite both Jeff and I enjoying this it's not a meal I'd make again. I might try experimenting with a crunchy, spicy oven baked chicken, but that would be another project.

The Sweetest Things.

2009-09-25T09:32:00.000-07:00

The dessert section seemed to swing to extremes. I had 3 very strong favorites and 2 equally strong dislikes. Of course that's speaking from the perspective of my taste buds, desiring things that aren't too sweet, others may find the recipes to affect them in completely different ways.

The good ones first:

One of the first desserts I made and still love is the honey and fig ice cream. Creamy, pure, lightly sweetened dairy goodness.

Staying on the frozen channel, the chocolate amaretto ice cream was almost equally good.

And, after this project I now view cardamom as an underused dessert flavoring. These cashew cookies were delicate and buttery. Of course, with a heavy handed application cardamom can be quite overpowering but a light sprinkling is like pixie dust, transforming a classic recipe into something unique and exotic.

And as much as it pains me, there were the bad ones too.

The pancakes (meant to be waffles) had promise but too much orange blossom water ruined them. Speaking of, I still have a bottle of the stuff in my fridge gathering mold. I feel bad throwing it out, but also can't think of what to use it for. Maybe I can make some perfumed soap?

The papaya mousse on the other hand had absolutely no potential. Simply bad, bitter and regrettable.

Before I logoff for today, I ought to mention how this recipe grew on me after the inital tasting. It really is a tangy and refreshing sorbet.

And here are all the sugary details on the other dessert projects undertaken.

Pochettes of Cardamom Creme Anglaise. Page 222.

2009-09-23T09:46:00.000-07:00

What I know about myself at this point in life is that I have a tendency to take on a hobby or project and become super obsessed with it. Case(s) in point: I got really into beading when I was younger, I had the whole plastic kit with various compartments and drawers for assorted beads. I'd make a ton of necklaces and bracelets and wear several of them at once. And now I don't even care for things around my neck or wrist much, I'm really more of an earrings person. Then take my past obsession with salsa (the dance not the condiment). I took lessons, went out dancing at least once a week if not more often, but after a while no more, the desire just wasn't there anymore. Granted I started going out less anyway, less late nights with cocktails at various bars and clubs and more nights at home with homemade dinner and a movie. I think this is something that happens to most people, you age and you're just tired of the bar/club scene. Don't get me wrong, I still have plenty of dinners out (usually with plenty of wine too) with either Jeff or friends. But you know, I'm ready to be in bed by midnight at the latest. So I guess where I'm going with this is the question of the whole cooking thing, specifically desserts. I used to bake a lot more when I was younger and enjoy my creations. Now, I still occasionally crave a treat, but I don't have much of a sweet tooth overall and I don't like things too sweet. Those cloying American-style cookies, cakes and especially icings make my teeth hurt and give me a headache. That's why I really enjoyed this recipe, the creme anglaise specifically. It's rich but subtle, more European than American. And creme anglaise is one of those classic French dessert sauces.

Moving on then, I started by making the creme anglaise first. I've made custard bases as part of this project already, for ice creams and with some initial failure involved, for the Tuscan lemon pudding but for this I bought just enough cream and half and half for one batch so I couldn't afford to screw up. Thus I consulted Joy of Cooking and used their detailed instructions to make the creme, utilizing a candy thermometer and the ingredients of cream, half and half, eggs, sugar, ground cardmamom and vanilla.

I stirred and stirred gently as advised, but my mind was preoccupied with a crossword I had open next to the stove. I've been consumed by the LA Times Sunday crossword and feel like I have to finish it every week. It takes me a while since it's not easy (but not as hard as NY Times Sunday edition) but I feel a powerful sense of accomplishment when done. See what I mean about obsessions? Anyways, the sauce thickened up all at once as custards tend to and it was just a tad lumpy. But that's okay because I strained it through a fine mesh strainer into a clean bowl set inside ice water.

I cooled the cream in the fridge and on another day I defrosted some fillo dough and got to work making the pochettes in a muffin pan. Pretty easy actually. If all fillo dough pockets were this simple.

Once the pochettes were stuffed with the cream filling and dutifully brushed with melted butter, I baked them for about 15 minutes and they came out puffed and golden brown.

These were very good! The cream thickened up nicely inside, a tad cottage cheesy in texture, but certainly tasty. The exterior shell was light and crispy. Overall I enjoyed the pochettes but I couldn't help noticing that the fillo was just a tad salty for this application. I absolutely loved this creme anglaise and I think it would have been better inside more of a cream puff type of pastry. Either way, Jeff ate these with relish for breakfast.

Since I didn't use all the filling for the little pastries I kept the creme anglaise in the fridge and enjoyed it with fresh berries. Yummy yummy yummy. These was just enough creaminess to have a velvety texture and the cardamom amount was perfect. Just enough to flavor the cream without overwhelming it, as in some other recipes.

But seriously I wonder what I'll do when this project is done. Will I have the stamina to take on another book, cover to cover? Or will I be so over my cooking obsession that I'll stay out of the kitchen altogether and allow Jeff to grill us up burgers on the 'ol bbq? Only time will tell.

Soup Stories.

2009-09-21T09:50:00.000-07:00

Having completed the soup section in Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet these are the soups I feel most strongly about. The ones I can see becoming a part of my regular repertoire.

Passata of white beans and sage. I still have my sage herb thriving in the garden so that would be a good reason to make this again, soon.

The jewel of the funghi kingdom, this mushroom soup is pretty darn good.

One of the first soups I made is still one of my faves from this cookbook, the South Indian spinach and lentil soup.

And, I love the velvety bisque-like texture of the curried butternut squash soup.

And of course, all the others ladle by ladle.

Chicken Soup with Cumin and Lemongrass. Page 68.

2009-09-19T09:49:00.000-07:00

Back around Labor Day when we were going back and forth on what to do for dinner, I made this soup and brought to a friend's house for dinner. It gave me the opportunity to use my recently purchased kaffir lime leaf plant. Hopefully I can keep it alive.

To make the soup was simple enough. I sauteed chopped onions with cumin seeds, chopped veggies, lemongrass and those kaffir lime leaves.

To the pot I added a whole locally grown chicken and chicken stock to cover. I allowed to gently simmer about 1.5 to 2 hours.

And I actually ran errands during this time. When I got home I fished out the bird, stripped it of it's meat and put that back in with the soup. I also picked out all the slivers of lemongrass stalks, which was more of a pain than it sounds.

This turned out to be a very aromatic and light soup. The scent of lemongrass was wonderful and all the flavors went together quite well. I liked that even after all that cooking time the veggies still had a nice bite to them. Definitely a good soup for winter when the weather is windy and dreary. We ate this the day I made it but I bet it'd be better the next day after it has a chance to sit a bit and for the flavors to meld. In the future, I think I'll also serve it with rice noodles for a bit more body.

Lamb Shanks with Red Wine and Olives. Page 167.

2009-09-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

I absolutely love lamb. If we're out at a restaurant and there's lamb on the menu there's a very good chance that I'm it having for dinner. I especially love slow braised lamb shanks with the richness of the meat flavor intensified and the meat itself falling off the bone tender. That being said I was excited to make this recipe, but having done it I wouldn't recommend that you do. It's pretty disappointing. I think the right idea is there. Brown the meat, throw in some veggies and wine and aromatics and braise in the oven for 1.25 to 1.5 hours. But it absolutely falls flat.

So, first I browned the grass fed farmer's market lamb shanks.

Then I added sliced shallots, chopped carrots and celery and aromatic herbs such as sage, marjoram and bay leaf.

After this went in green olives and frozen artichoke hearts. Reading the recipe I though how interesting and unique, olives with lamb. Well it's downright wrong and weird! And I consider myself pretty adventurous when it relates to food. If this was one of Padma's aspiring top chefs he'd be sent home with nary a compliment.

But ranting aside, I poured in some red wine and set the covered dutch oven in a pre-heated oven at 300 for about an hour. Then another half hour, then because the meat wasn't tender enough, yet another 30 minutes. In the end I baked this for about 2 hours and the meal came out looking like this, or mostly so, I forgot to take a photo right away so this is after we had hacked at the meat for a while.

The better part first: the meat was pretty decent, it was mostly tender enough while still interestingly enough reddish on the inside. The strange thing is that it didn't have that gamey lamb flavor, it could have passed for beef. Granted, this could have been the meat itself that I bought at the market or it could have been the godawful sauce it was cooked in. So that's the bad part, the sauce was a thin, gray liquid watered down by the moisture from the celery and the artichokes and let's not forget those olives. There was no depth, no richness but rather a lingering winey and briney flavor. Adding only vegetables that exude moisture was the misstep here. There is a reason that potatoes (or flour) are added to stews, it thinkens the broth. Padma writes that she got this recipe from her husband and if this is any indication of his cooking abilities he'd best stick to writing controversial verse. Needless to say, never again. What I would like to replicate at home is the AMAZING lamb shanks I've had at Jezebel. I specifically remember one that was braised for 10 hours and served with a Guinness reduction. Meal of a lifetime.

Pork Tenderloin with Dates and Water Chestnuts. Page 147.

2009-09-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I bought a nice pork tenderloin at the Farmer's market and made this dish. I started by marinating sliced tenderloin slices in ume plum vinegar, which I bought specifically for this dish but which is also cheap so that's okay.

In a wok, using sesame oil, I sauteed some cumin and sesame seeds along with chopped onion, garlic and ginger.

I added tamarind gravy, finely chopped dates and minced chipotle pepper which had been soaked in water. I allowed this mixture to cook down until it resembled a thick gravy of sorts.

At this point I added the pork slices and canned water chestnuts and cooked a bit further until the pork was just cooked though, but still tender, and honestly still a tad pink on the inside but that's how I like it.

I served this on a bed of jasmine rice and boy was it good! I loved the combination of flavors here, the sourness of the tamarind was offset by the sweetness of the dates, nice crunch here and there from the ginger and the water chestnuts. And all thoughout permeated by the smokiness of the chipotle chilies. A very sophisticated, well flavored meal. Jeff asked whether the sweetness came from sugar and I said, no, the minced dates. He kept trying to find a piece of date, I really did a job on those dates cutting them so finely.

The pork was a great vehicle for this sauce, but I could also see it with chicken or even shrimp. I think I would have prefered to sear the meat on it own before adding to the sauce, but that's just a personal preference. It was quite good as made.

A Rustic and Wild Mushroom Soup. Page 76.

2009-09-10T09:16:00.000-07:00

I love mushrooms, but cleaning and slicing 2 lbs of shrooms can dampen the enthusiasm of even the most ardent fan. Plus there were the $8 per ounce dried chanterelles. Thank goodness I needed only 1 oz of those.

After the time consuming task of dealing with so many mushrooms, making the soup itself was actually quite easy. After cutting up the shrooms I sauteed chopped onions and garlic in olive oil and butter.

I added the mushrooms, chicken stock, chives and the rinds of parmesan cheese I've been hoarding in the freezer for months now.

I allowed this mixture to simmer for a good 45 minutes, until the shrooms were tender.

As you can see this recipe makes a ton of soup. We ate some for dinner one day with the lobster, then with leftover bread another day. This is the definitely the kind of soup that ages well in the fridge. I forgot the chopped parsley initially, but rectified it on the 2nd meal. The soup was woodsy and satisfying. It is very mushroomy in flavor and the parmesan rinds give it just the right level of richness. Or it could have been the butter. I also used my own homemade chicken stock and I think it too makes all the difference in the world.

Start Me Up.

2009-09-07T09:30:00.000-07:00

Happy Labor Day to all us working stiffs! After I made the lobster bruschetta I got into somewhat of a reflective mood and thought I'd take the opportunity to sum up this Starters & Appetizers section. And what a culinary world tour it was! From Indian, to Moroccan (preserved lemon), to Classic American flavors, we had it all. And I liked most of it. Wow! Looking at the list, I didn't hate anything in this section. That's nice for a change.

First the crowd pleasers:

Party goers quite enjoyed the grilled manchego bites and I appreciate how easy they are to put together. Maximum flavor for minimum effort.

Movie goers liked the mushroom and goat cheese flautas and so did I.

What else folks? Besides the pleasing and expensive flavors of crab and lobster (how can you go wrong with those?!) I was really surprised by the flavors of the root vegetable carpaccio and the warm peanut salad. Both enjoyable and unique.

Before we part for this proletariat holiday here's the full lowdown if you have time to slog through it all.

Lobster Bruschetta. Page 20.

2009-09-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

Jeff and I applied for (and received) our marriage license so it seemed a good a time as any to celebrate with some lobster. I picked up 2 live seabugs at Quality Seafood (love that place, especially their oyster po-boys) and set them on ice in the kitchen sink.

Meanwhile I toasted some nice buttermilk sourdough bread, in slices.

I also whipped together a quick dressing of sorts, of chopped celery, minced serrano pepper, parsley, chives, mayonnaise and olive oil. Seasoned with freshly ground pepper and salt and set aside.

It came time to steam the lobsters. Jeff, not wanting to be complicit, left the room and I steamed each lobster, one at a time in a pot with a scant 1" of water on the bottom for 15 minutes. Padma doesn't provide any instructions on how to cook the lobster. She justs asks for the meat of the sea critters as though it falls from the sky like manna from heaven. So I relied on good 'ol Joy of Cooking and so 15 minutes per bug it was, until they came out bright red.

By this point Jeff ventured down and helped me crack the tails and claws, extracting all the meat into a bowl. I mixed the sweet sea goodness with the mayo mixture.

To eat, I topped slices of bread with the lobster mixture to create a bruschetta of sorts. In retrospect I think I cut the bread too thick and it would have made for a more elegant meal had the slices been thinner. Pre-sliced next time? In any case, other than the chives being a tad strong and overpowering, this did not suck at all. It reminded me of either a lobster roll or the lobster version of chicken salad, slightly creamy and tangy. We joked that this is what rich people at the Waldorf Astoria and whatnot mean when they ask for salad. Bring me a salad boy and be quick about it! Ah, the tragi-comedy of the proletarian (almost) married couple.

Pork with Chile Verde. Page 146.

2009-09-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

To accompany the green chicken enchiladas, I made this pork stew. Because why not. I cut up some fresh tomatillos, jalapenos, garlic, onions and pork stew meat. The latter was a mix of already diced pork and pork shoulder from a stand at the Farmer's Market.

Then basically I browned the pork, added the green things plus dried oregano and topped the whole thing with enough water to cover, about 3 cups as I made 1.5 times the recipe.

I set the stew to simmer on low heat for a couple of hours. Padma says one hour, but you know how that goes. I know that to get a reasonably thick stew with the meat falling apart tender takes patience and a lot of time on the stove. And that's the thing with good one-pot meals, you just close the lid and let it do it's thing. Now, I do think you should know that this is not one of those ooey gooey cheesy porky stews, it's more light and green and healthy tasting, in a good way. I also topped the stew with chopped cilantro and grated queso fresco plus a squeeze of lime to make it more interesting and flavorful. It tasted good the first day, better the next and even more delicious on the 3rd day. Served over rice this makes a hearty and filling meal. Perhaps in the future I'd like to try this with chicken, but I'm in no particular hurry.

Veal Smothered with Thyme and Olives. Page 152.

2009-09-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

My .62 of a pound, $27/lb veal got turned into pan-fried veal cutlets with shallots, olives and thyme. First I marinated the veal scallopini in white wine with crushed pepper and salt.

Then I made a quick sauce of sauteed shallots, green olives and thyme. Okay, the green olive backstory: the recipe specifically called for Spanish pitted green olives. The only Spanish ones I found at the market were not pitted but did look attractively fresh and vibrant green. I bought them and did my hack of a job cutting them into smaller pieces, like so.

That arduous task accomplished I made the sauce with chicken broth and the marinade liquid and kept warm while I dealt with the veal.

The thin strips of baby cow I dredged with flour, then flash fried in a skillet. I know it's all too easy to overcook delicate meat like this so it remained on the heat for only 3 minutes, that's total for both sides.

I served the meat lightly covered with the sauce and with Yukon Gold mashed potatoes. I love using YG potatoes, they have such a buttery flavor. So there you have it, what I like to think of as a classic American meal. Meat, veggie, starch. Mom, Dad and Beaver really enjoyed this. Okay, just kidding about that part. Both Jeff and I really liked this. He loved the shallot/olive mixture particularly well and he's not really much of an olive guy. These fresh(er) Spanish olives really are something else, less briny and more toothsome than what I'm used to. Very nice. I thought the veal was a touch tough, but so it goes I guess. Oh and yes, before I forget, I halved the amount of veal meat used but made the full amount of cheapo shallots and olives. Because that's how us recessionistas do it. For an even less expensive, less controversial meal I might make this next time with chicken cutlets instead, pounded super thin.

Green Chicken Enchiladas. Page 116.

2009-08-29T12:10:00.000-07:00

This meal is from the week's small dinner party. Since I was feeding just a few more people than Jeff and I, I doubled the recipe. To make the prep a little easier on myself I prepared the sauce and chicken a day ahead. I started by basically poaching a whole chicken in water flavored with parsley, bay leaf, onion, garlic and salt. Padma says to use chicken breasts, however the organic version of breast meat is expensive and I've gotten in the habit of getting meat from the Farmer's Market, which sells them mostly whole anyway. Although I should note that once I took the cooked bird out and denuded it of it's meat, it wasn't quite enough so I asked Jeff to pick up some extra and he came home with organic chicken thighs which worked great. I like dark meat better anyway.

While the chicken was cooking at a bare bare simmer, I started making the tomatillo sauce by cutting up about 4 pounds of the fruit. I tried to grow my own tomatillos this year, I really did. The end result was a single sticky fruit about the size of my thumbnail. The farmers really do this much better than I can.

I briefly simmered the cut up tomatillos with chilies and garlica and later sauteed with chopped sweet onions.

I pureed the mixture in a blender and ended up with a classic green salsa.

By this time the chicken was done and after letting it cool (only briefly to the chagrin of my fingers) I shredded the meat into bite sized pieces.

Here I varied a bit from Padma's recipe. She instructs to fill the corn tortillas with chicken then pour about a spoon of the sauce over the filling. I though it'd be easier just to flavor the chicken with sauce before stuffing the tortillas and so it was. It also gave me a chance to adjust for salt.

After all this I was ready to actually roll the enchiladas. Padma doesn't mention that it's easier to roll the corn tortillas if you warm them up a bit first but I'm telling you it is. I set up an assembly line of a dry skillet on a burner, with a bag of corn tortillas nearby, the chicken meat and my casserole dish. I'd warm a tortilla, fill it and roll it closed very quickly, placing seam side down in the pyrex dish. All the while listening to hair band classic rock on satellite radio. That's how old people have fun.

I ended up with 2 dishes worth of tightly rolled enchiladas. Look at those beauties.

Which I topped with the remaining green sauce, chopped cilantro and freshly grated queso fresco.

I baked at 375 and we enjoyed our meal. The end result is not very pretty but is sure is delicious and comforting. These were enchiladas in what I like to think of as the classic Mexican style, lighter on the cheese and the sauce than Tex Mex. If you like your enchiladas drowning in sauce and oozing with gooey melted cheese these are not for you. The chicken meat was tender, the tomatillo sauce tangy and the light covering of queso fresco a perfect compliment to it all. The queso fresco is a lighter cheese, somewhat like feta so it doesn't melt completely, but also doesn't taste rich and fatty either. All in all a good enchilada recipe. I would have wished for more spice, but that is probably only my overactive taste buds speaking. What I really want to keep from this meal specifically, is the method of making tomatillo salsa which was quite easy and flavorful.

Cassoulet with Beef. Page 150. Part 1.

2009-08-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

My days off this week, with one exception, were pretty nice. I sometimes feel like a hermit on those days and so it was this week. I lived the world of little house on the prairie, with nicer house and appliances, and stocked up on food provisions by making my own pesto and stock. The basil forest by this time of year had gotten to 3', maybe even 4' tall so I chopped them down, picked off all the vibrant green leaves, double washed and dried the leaves on a kitchen towel. Somewhat labor intensive, but it felt nice to be outside in the morning and doing something productive, before the heat of the day really set in. I've read somewhere previously that it's best to pick plants early in the morning when they are still full of the night dew. Not sure if it makes a difference, but the pesto turned out great. I also used pecans instead of pine nuts.

In other news, I made a veal dinner for Jeff and I one night and had a few friends over for a Mexican themed dinner, with recipes from the cookbook naturally, the 2nd. When I was purchasing the veal scallopini ($27 per pound by the way, holy cow indeed) a lightbulb went off in my head and I asked the butcher if he had any veal bones by chance. I knew I'd need veal stock for cassoulet recipe that I'd make at some point. And sure enough he sold me 3 pounds of frozen ones.

And so the $6 worth of bones occupied me for the following 2 days. Better than any more mall I tell you. I used the veal stock method from Michael Rulhman's website and made both the primary stock and the remouillage, then combined the 2 and reduced them. When Padma writes that the most challenging recipe in Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet is the Moroccan chicken pie, I don't think she considered that some nutty person would try to complicate her cassoulet (and thus make it the most difficult thing in the book) by making their own veal stock. But the only stock that's worthwhile to me these days, is homemade.

As M. R. recommends I started by roasting the veal bones until golden brown.

Then I put them in a stock pot along with flavorings and aromatics and covered with water. For the flavor elements I used some bay leaves, a chopped up onion, garlic cloves, about 2 spoons of tomato paste and some cut up carrots. I let this mixture bake in the oven for about 10 hours, so most of day one. M.R. says to set the oven to 190 but that didn't seem to be doing anything to the stock so I upped it to 250.

When this broth came out at the end of the day I strained it through a mesh strainer and filled the pot up with a new batch of water and back in the oven it went, overnight this time. It came out with the liquid much reduced.

This is the first stock.

And this is the remouillage.

As mentioned I combined the 2 liquids, in the same (cleaned) pot and set to reducing it, this time on the stovetop. It took a good 4-5 hours to get it down to about 6 cups (which is what I need) and I ran some errands and attended to other cooking projects. At the end of the cooking time I strained the stock through a mesh strainer lined with a floursack towel.

Here's the finished product.

And here's my earthquake of a kitchen in the midst of several (simultaneous) projects.

I'm a little torn as to whether this was worth the time or not. It's fairly time consuming, but not difficult and I do need the stock. I do feel like it could have been better. The end result was to me disappointing. I've never had veal stock on it's own, but I've read descriptions of a velvety, complex substance and I'm not sure I've achieved that here. There is a predominant taste of something that reminds me of organ meat, which while not bad, is somewhat off-putting for a broth. Perhaps it's the roasting of the bones. Next time I'll try to make the stock a more traditional way, on the stovetop, and skimming the impurities. It would be even more complicated than the above method, but as my friends reminded me last night I'm nothing if not crazy. Hopefully just a litte though.

Carmen Bullosa's Sun-dried Ancho Chilies Stuffed with Meat and Capers. Page 142.

2009-08-26T10:02:00.000-07:00

Turns out ancho chilies are just dried poblanos. Who knew? They were easy enough to find. My favorite grocery wonderland has them in bulk in the produce section.

To use up some sorry-ass end of season tomatoes I grew I made the required red sauce with cherry and plum tomatoes (not the large toms specified). And because I didn't quite have enough of the fruit I threw in a small can of tomato sauce. Plus I added crushed red peppers to give it heat, because why wouldn't you. Stewed tomatoes on their own are rather boring.

That requisite prep out of the way I browned some local grass fed ground beef and pork with onions, garlic and sliced almonds. I also stirred in capers and chopped green onions and seasoned with some very generous dashes of cayenne. Ok, full disclosure, the ground pork was really a mix of ground venison and ground pork I had laying around in the form of a pan sausage. The pork requirement was only 1/2 lb and since the pan sausage is half pork anyway... You get the idea. It worked fine for this.

While the meat was cooking I soaked the anchos in water and made myself a cantaloupe aqua fresca. Okay it had gin in it, the agua, not the meat.

With considerable effort I stuffed the dried chilies with the meat mixture. I say considerable because soaking the chilies either made them start to fall apart or fiercely maintain their leathery impenetrable exteriors. Padma would have you slice open the chilies before soaking them. But ain't no way that was going to happen. So bit by bit, with ancho skin tearing all over the place I managed to stuff the suckers, and I'm using the term stuff loosely here. Some of the meat filling I just ended up placing around the peppers in the baking dish. I topped this casserole-like thing with the previously made tomato sauce and set in a 325 oven for supposedly 10-13 minutes.

Here's the thing, Padma admonishes to not drown the peppers in red sauce. "It's not soup," she says. That's all well and good. And the instructions to bake the peppers at a fairly low heat for a piddling 10 minutes is meant to only warm them? I'm not sure. But they weren't looking that great so I upped the temp to 400 and baked another 15 minutes. Finally I pulled them out because a girl can't live on gin and juice alone and we were hungry. I served the peppers with some Goya refried black beans from a can, warmed up, and topped with grated queso fresco. Mmm I love me some refried beans. And really the legumes were the star of the show. Don't get me wrong the meaty peppers weren't bad. The browned beef/pork mixture had a nice flavor and pleasant crunch from the almonds. What I would have liked is more sauce, a lot more sauce actually, and for the peppers to have been baked in said sauce until juicy and with the anchos more tender. As it is those dried skins never quite mellowed so while it was a decent meal it didn't knock my sweatpants off and certainly not worth the effort to prepare again.

Vegetables and Side Dishes. A wrap-up.

2009-08-24T10:07:00.000-07:00

So I finished this chapter by making green mango curry the other day. The recipes here were a bit of a mixed bag. Some baking, some sauteeing, some not cooking much at all. I got to try some things for the first time, fiddlehead ferns most memorably, and had my share of successes and failures along the way. And I've ended up with a handful of recipes that I like and would probably make again.

This potato masala for one, never hurt anyone. Once fall comes around I'll start keeping potatoes in the crisper. It feels like a cold weather dish somehow.
The curried beans with black-eyed peas were enjoyable. I really need to make this with actual Chinese long beans and tell you all about it.
That sneaky spinach catalana surprised me, in a good way.
And finally, the glazed carrots ain't bad at all. With tarragon growing in the garden this dish is a simple step away.

Onwards and upwards though, it's high time to finish this project, which means we'll be serious carnivores around here as what's left is mostly meat based. Oy! And all this gluttony a month before we're scheduled to bare our guts in Fiji. Lord help me.

Green Mango Curry. Page 182.

2009-08-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

In addition to some obsessive gardening and stinking up the house with chutneys during my days off this week, I also made this green curry for dinner. It's the last recipe in the veggies and side dishes section and I've been keeping my eyes open for green mangoes. I ended up finding some at Fiesta where I was shopping for ingredients for a Mexican themed dinner I have planned for next week. Everything is incredibly cheap at Fiesta. Most likely not organic, but definitely cheap.

While these mangoes are green they are not very sour so this dish probably didn't taste the way it's eaten in India. That and the fact that I didn't use any asafetida.

I cut up the mangoes as small as I could, leaving the skin on only half of them. I wanted to skin them all, but figured I'd compromise with Padma's instructions.

I finished the dish by stirring in some cayenne, toasted mustard seeds and sesame oil and it was ready for it's close-up.

Right off the bat I know I would have liked this better without the skins. They were just too tough for my taste. Otherwise this was fresh and tangy. Perfect for summer or as a relish to accompany more hearty foods. I would have liked this a bit spicier, but as it was the cayenne gave it a pretty good kick. If I make this again, I'd peel all the skins and stir in some fresh minced serranos or habaneros.

Sugar and Cinnamon Chips. Page 204.

2009-08-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

Jeff and I went to dinner the other day at one of our favorite Mexican places and I brought home the leftover tortillas. To make this ridiculous recipe and be over and done with it, I cut the tortilla into a few triangles and pan-fried them.

Then I shook some sugar and cinnamon over them. Now I'm done.

That looks difficult huh? I'm not against accent foods such as chips but really does it require a whole page recipe? I think not. Seriously, this recipe could be Twittered and still have enough characters left to include an ice cream dish to go along with it. I wonder if Padma and the editors, having got to the last chapters in the book were just trying to fill up space...

Oh well, this tasted fine, if you want to know. It tasted like a sweet crispy chip. I'm not in the habit of making empty calories at home and so won't be doing this again. But you can if you want to, I've certainly given the whole recipe away here.

Tarted up.

2009-08-17T11:53:00.000-07:00

If I may say so myself I made a pretty damn good tart over the weekend. Despite my best attempts to screw it up while BUI (baking under the influence) it turned out very nearly perfect. Since I got the latest Food and Wine I've had my eye on this peach tart, more specifically the dough. I was interested in the description of the tart as more cakey and puffy as opposed to being crunchy. That and the fact that it contains less than a stick of butter. I had some Texas figs on the counter starting to get just a wee bit past their prime and so my idea for a mascarpone, honey and fig tart was born. I used the dough recipe on the Food & Wine website verbatim, other than the lemon zest, I was out of lemons. Being a wage slave and all, I made this in batches. One day I pulsed the dough in the food processor, it came together like a dream by the way. I stuck in the fridge and on Saturday night this weekend, with a good wine buzz going and not yet ready for bed at midnight, I rolled out the dough, draped it into my brand new removable bottom tart pan and par baked it. Now I know that the instructions say you don't have to par bake this dough, but I was planning on cutting the figs very thinly and didn't want to overbake them. So there you have it. I par-baked on Saturday night (at 425, not 375 Whoops!) and layered mascarpone cheese and figs on Sunday morning, then baked at the actual 375 degrees for about 15 minutes. Yummy! What a great breakfast. I was craving something pastry/dessert-like but not too sweet and this fit the bill.

Honey mascarpone and fig tart:

I dough recipe from F&W

3/4 to 1 lb figs or other not too juicy fruit
4 oz mascapone
2-3 tbsp honey

Make the dough in the food processor per instructions. Place into 11" tart pan, poke all over with fork and par bake for 15 minutes at 375. In the meantime mix the mascarpone with honey. Spread this mixture over the partially baked tart and layer thinly sliced figs in a decorative pattern. Bake another 15 minutes at 375.

Pipali Chicken Curry, Madras Style. Page 132.

2009-08-15T10:36:00.000-07:00

I made a valiant attempt over the last couple of months to find pipali pepper, a requested ingredient for this curry, but was not successful. None of the online spice emporiums carry it and with the list of recipes still to be made running low, I decided to cook this dish anyway, with what I had on hand. The recipe makes a good amount and along with rice and the results of my attempt at naan it fed a few us for a couple of meals.

I started by cutting a whole locally raised chicken into 6 pieces (I usually leave the drumstick and thigh intact). Then I commenced cooking by sauteeing shallots with garlic, ginger, dried chilies, various spices (including the non-pipali regular black pepper) and fresh serranos, the last my little addition to make for a spicier curry, the way I like it.

After a bit I added shredded coconut and stirred to lightly toast it.

The book then instructs to add the chicken parts and brown them, but the dutch oven was already crowded and there was too much liquid to get a good sear so I browned the chicken in a separate skillet, in batches.

I added the lightly browned bird parts to the rest of the mixture, followed swiftly by cut up potatoes.

The mixture got topped with tamarind gravy (a ball of tamarind paste soaked in boiling water) plus an additional 4 cups of water and curry powder. I put the lid on and allowed the curry to simmer for a good 45 minutes. That's how long it took to get the potatoes soft and the chicken falling off the bone tender, which is to say, longer than Padma claims. Halfway through the cooking time I, of my own accord, fished out the chicken breasts so they wouldn't overcook. That's one thing that bugs me about some of these whole chicken recipes, they usually don't take into account how quickly the bird breasts dry out.

In any case once the stew was further along, I cut up some fresh cherry tomatoes from my garden and added those in. I should mention that Padma actually requests plum tomatoes here but I have the fresh cherry toms so why not use those. I estimated about 2 to 2.5 times the number of plums requested and it seemed to work fine.

After setting some of the cooked curry aside for Jeff, I finished the rest with his most beloved herb, cilantro, and a bit of fresh lime juice. After tasting for flavor I also ended up adding more curry powder and quite a bit of salt.

So let's see. This turned out nice. My concerns about pouring in 4 cups of water in addition to the tamarind gravy proved to be needless, the starch from the potatoes thickened it sufficiently and the curry had a nice stew-like consistency that quite honestly I liked much better the next day, after the flavors had a chance to meld. On the day I made this it took up most of my afternoon so I wouldn't call it a quick weeknight meal. It also, interestingly enough, didn't contain any coconut milk which I tend to associate with curries. Rather, this had a more sour and tangy flavor, from the tamarind and the lime at the end. It's a nice fresh meal that's appropriate for summer but somehow just wasn't my favorite. Allowing it to sit overnight in the fridge helped as did adding the fresh chilies for more spice. If I made it again I'd want to tinker a little with the ingredients, perhaps even more fresh chilies, or carrots for additional veggie flavor? Not sure, but something to keep in the back of my mind when I get the urge for experimentation.

Mushroom and Goat Cheese Flautas. Page 11.

2009-08-13T09:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday a few of us went to see Food Inc and in true sustainable style we carpooled from my house. For nourishment I made these flautas and they proved to be a tasty and portable dinner. I started by chopping up some portobello mushroom and shallots.

I sauteed the veggies with dried herbs and a bit of crushed red pepper.

And in the meantime I made a quick homemade ricotta cheese. I probably typically wouldn't go though so much trouble, but I was also making a hazelnut/chocolate gelato from this month's Gourmet and I had enough leftover milk (local and organic of course) that it made sense. I heated the milk over medium heat, added lemon juice, allowed the mixture to curdle and then strained through a floursack towel set inside a mesh strainer. It worked out perfectly and was actually quick and easy.

To complete the flauta filling I mixed the sauteed mushrooms with the ricotta and a full containter of feta cheese.

In preparation for my friends coming over I rolled this filling in 8 of the healthy 7-grain tortillas, secured with toothpicks and set aside.

I pan-fried these babies several minutes before everyone arrived and set to keep warm in a 200 degree oven. If you make these keep in mind that they're best served immediately. The more they sit the more the juice from the filling seeps into the tortillas and makes them soggy. I'm eating one for lunch today and let's just say it's not the most crispy snack. Rather it's a bit heavy. But otherwise these are awesome. The filling is perfectly seasoned and herby. It's a nice proportion of cheese to sauteed mushrooms and they don't taste greasy at all. I like the filling so much in fact that in the future I'd be interested in trying it inside a fillo dough.

As far as the movie, it's what most people would call a downer. It's a good visualization of what has been written in Michael Pollan's and Eric Schlosser's books, as well as covered in print media such as the NY Times. I liked that we got this documentary, to reach more people who may otherwise not pick up a book to read the topic. The advice to eat local, cook at home and eat less meat are all very valid, it's just depressing that we have gotten ourselves into this mess to begin with. One thing I want to research from the movie is a small part about some semolina being possibly derived from corn. Is that true? I do eat a lot of pasta, but I thought it was it's own grain. Some research in my future.

Merguez Sausage with Fennel and Couscous. Page 148.

2009-08-12T12:20:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to write up this dish for a while, but I had used Jeff's camera for the photos (mine got left behind at work) and it took me a while to transfer the images to blogger and to remember, oh yeah, I have to post this recipe. And now that it's becoming slim pickings (I've made my way through the majority of the recipes in the cookbook) anything becomes a good topic for posting. So here goes.

I started by toasting some cumin seeds and fresh (from the freezer) bay leaves in my beloved dutch oven.

To the seeds I added shallots and allowed them to soften.

Then I threw in cut-up merguez sausage. I thought it'd be hard to find, but lo and behold Whole Foods had it.After browning the sausage I added fresh sliced fennel bulb, chicken stock, cous and cous and dill and closed the pot to let this mixture steam until done.

I sprinkled sumac on top and we ate this for dinner. Hmm. How to describe it. This meal was what we kept referring to as an "interesting" dish. You know when you're taking small bites, chewing, trying to taste the individual components, saying huh interesting the whole time. I should say first of all that texture wise this was perfectly done. The cous cous tender but not soggy, the fennel al dente. For the taste, first there was the sausage. I've never had lamb sausage before, but as can be imagined it has a strong flavor. I liked that part of it as I absolutely love lamb, what threw me off was the pronounced sweetness and slight acidity. I've since discovered it's from the paprika. Huh. Interesting. Then you have the individual components of fennel and dill, which went quite well together and paired with the cous cous in an interesting way. There's that word again. I guess bottom line, I can't quite give a firm verdict on this recipe. We ate it. I enjoyed it, perhaps a bit more than Jeff. I'm not in love with it. Perhaps it's an acquired taste and a recipe that would benefit from a repeat performance. As a side note, I'm not terribly familiar with Moroccan cuisine (the country allegedly behind this combination of ingredients) so maybe I need to try other recipes and pairings from this region to really get a better idea of the flavor profile.

Hot and Sour Fruit Chaat. Page 14.

2009-08-10T08:53:00.000-07:00

I brought this fruit salad, because that's really what it is, to a birthday potluck yesterday. Other than a couple of wussies for whom the heat was too much I think it went over quite well. Though it certainly can't compete with birthday boy Struan's awesome lobster, eggs served on the side.

The morning of the potuck I made this super simple dressing by whisking together sesame oil, lemon juice (was out of lime) and yuzu juice along with a tiny bit of cayenne pepper.

I then proceeded to chop up an english cucumber, red peppers from my garden, black plums and an organic gala apple (instead of the granny smith, raw grannies are a tad sour for my taste). I used my food processor and at the party later, was extolling its many virtues to friends.

After the sliced produce got dumped into a bowl I garnished it with fresh mint leaves and not so fresh frozen pomegranate seeds.

I let it languish in the fridge all day and Jeff had the important job of bringing it to the partay.

This was good! A refreshing tangy salad with a kick. I loved the combo of sweet, sour and spicy. As I mentioned it was a tad spicy for some but that can certainly be adjusted with the lesser use of cayenne. And I should also note here that I didn't have black cumin so that was left out. Otherwise I recreated it faithfully and although it's in the appetizer section it would be a nice ending to a hearty meal. Fruity and cooling. Perfect for this never ending record breaking furnace of a summer.

A fishy ending.

2009-08-09T11:26:00.000-07:00

Haha I'm so funny I crack myself up. I finished all the seafood recipes in the cookbook last week so here's my fishy wrap-up. Pun intended. Ok enough, I probably shouldn't quit my job to become a comedy writer just yet.

If you, dear reader, don't make anything from Padma's hop-around-the-world cookbook, I urge you to at least cook this green curry. You will instantly swear that perhaps you do have some Thai ancestors somewhere in your lineage. Without having been to Thailand I'd say this is as authentic as I've seen green curries get, here in the US.

And if you like seafood and decide to dive in head first these are my other recommendations:

The sea scallops. The cucumber relish, in particular, is worth making.

Those Singapore noodles. Even though it's different from the singapore noodles I've had in restaurants, every once in a while I get a craving for these. Must make again. Soon. Unless I find a better recipe in the meantime.

Pan-seared flounder. Requires you to make the chipotle and date chutney first. From then on, very easy.

Seafood spaghettini. You can even forget about the clams if you want. Just make that chipotle and green olive paste and toss with some pasta.

The healthy red snapper meal is not bad at all.

And finally, the white fish in creamy coconut milk. Mmm.

And of course, the full "catch" is listed here. Tee hee.

Chicken Korma (Stew). Page 123.

2009-08-07T10:56:00.000-07:00

This is another one of those long, multi-step recipes. Thankfully, this time I had a little more time on my hands and I set up my mise en place in advance of actual cooking.

I ground up star anise, black pepper and the seeds from green cardamom pods in my spice grinder, in actuality a repurposed coffee grinder.

I set the spice blend aside and combined, in a blender, 4 plum tomatoes (from my garden) with 2 cups of half and half. Padma actually asks for light cream. But what the hell is light cream? I do not know. So I used half and half. The resulting frothy liquid looks a lot like a strawberry milkshake.

Meanwhile I had cut-up chicken thighs marinating in some vinegar. The recipe calls for chicken boobs but those are expensive so there you have it. Besides I like dark meat better.

Then, I gathered up some dried chilies, a long cinnamon stick and some brown cardamom pods and set those aside for later.

In the midst of all this I also chopped up that holy trinity of all these Asian/Indian dishes, ginger, garlic and shallots. Side note: I think Jeff may have actually helped me with the shallots on this one. THAT'S WHY THEY LOOK SO PATHETIC. Kidding. Kidding.

With a meat mallet I crushed up some raw cashews, still in their bag to avoid making a mess.

And if all this weren't enough preparation to get ready for cooking I also had a golf ball sized piece of tamarind soaking in hot water.

To be fair, once I did start cooking this stew it came together fairly quickly.

I sauteed the shallots, garlic, ginger and the rough cashew pieces with the whole spices and dried chilies.

I then added the tamarind gravy and allowed it to simmer.

Once the shallots were softened I poured in the cream/tomato mixture, the ground spices and garam masala and simmered further, strring often, to blend the flavors. That resulted in pink soup. Yum.

Kidding. I gently lowered in the chicken pieces and kept them on the heat until they were tender and cooked through.

Of course in the midst of all this I had some basmati rice steaming in a rice cooker. I served the stew over the rice and we ate in front of the TV.

I guess this was the evening of mediocrity. The movie was only ok. Not very funny for a supposed comedy. And this, well it too, seemed to be lacking. First it was too rich and creamy with not enough tomato flavor. Now, I've never eaten chicken korma but I've had enough Indian food to know that this is only posing as korma. 4 plum tomatoes to balance out 2 cups of cream?! Really Padma? I had my doubts about all that cream, but went ahead with the recipe as written. What I should have done is cut the half and half down to 1 cup or even less and added tomato paste or sauce. This recipe seems to have more gut friendly proportions using as it does 1/2 cup cream and 1/2 cup yogurt. And while the aromatic flavor of cardamon and star anise was nice I would have liked more spice in the form of fresh chilies. Perhaps korma is not meant to be a spicy dish so I can forgive the lack of heat, but it should have been much better tested to include a reasonable amount of cream. Good grief.

My favorite drinks.

2009-08-05T10:54:00.000-07:00

If there's one thing I know at this point in my life (and there's so much I don't) it's what I like to drink. Crisp white wines for summer. Vodka and tonic as a go-to cocktail when out. Fruit forward pinot noirs and peppery syrahs. What I don't like is any dark liquor (with the exception of some of the less pungent dark rums) Jack, whiskey, any of the scotches. Blech!

But you know, growing is learning or some such BS and I'm usually open to trying new things (except the aforementioned scotch/whiskey, seriously non-negotiable). For example Jeff discovered a fun new drink this summer and we've been staying cool with it most of season, when lounging by the pool or as a pre-dinner cocktail. It's a dark and stormy and all you do is take 1 part dark rum, 2-3 parts ginger beer (such as Reed's) and a generous squeeze of fresh lime and shake the whole thing with plenty of ice. The boys like Flor de Cana rum, but I'm a pansy I guess because I prefer the milder tasting One Barrel.

Doing this cookbook project has opened my eyes to new ingredients, new recipes and methods of preparation. And reluctantly at first, to new booze. And since I've completed all the drink recipes in the book (all 5 of them!) I'd like to present my findings.

Exhibit A: the Southern Comfort lemonade. I fought it, I really did, but the use of SoCo really does add something unique. I'm a convert.

Exhibit B: the white sangria is something I know and love. But I hadn't ever made it with star anise and cinnamon sticks and boy, am I glad I did. The best discovery about this recipe is the peach liqueur. Specifically, Mathilde.

The rest of the beverage recipes, for me, are not worth making again. If you're into sweet girlie drinks you'll surely enjoy the raspberry Champagne spritzer. Me, I like the harder stuff.

Tomato Chutney. Page 248.

2009-08-03T10:24:00.000-07:00

My intrepid cherry tomato plant is still bursting with ripe juicy fruit. Even in this prolonged 100+ degree heat it is still flowering, setting and ripening fruit. I have the Large Cherry variety and though it's been super prolific I don't think I'll plant it again. It's not very sweet. I've been doing some research and Sungold sounds like a promising option for next summer.

But even though it's not too sweet on its own it makes a great ingredient for this tomato chutney which was very easy to put together.

I blended up these little cherries with dry red peppers until pureed.

Meanwhile, I dry roasted coriander, fenugreek and sesame seeds as well as white gram lentils. An equal amount of each.

In a separate pot I toasted mustard seeds in sesame oil then added the tomato puree and the dry roasted seeds and cooked a bit until the gram lentils, specifically, were softened. I DID NOT use any asafetida powder and come to think of it HAVE NOT in any other recipes since the Laughing Hens project left my house smelling like the dirtiest nastiest sock you can imagine for close to a week. I just thought you should this about the asafetida powder. I'm recreating the recipes faithfully except for that god awful powder. IT TRULY IS THE WORK OF THE DEVIL. Not that I feel strongly about it or anything.

I jarred up the sauce and we've been eating it as an accent with rice and as a type of salsa with chips, among other uses. It's not bad and has a pleasant flavor, but it doesn't have the same place in my heart as the superb chipotle and date chutney. I like spicy things and sauces and I really wish this had more of a kick. The dry chilies weren't enough. I think this could have used a good dose of habaneros or scotch bonnets. But that's just my humble opinion.

Steamed Vietnamese Monkfish, Vegetables and Noodles. Page 102.

2009-08-01T09:00:00.000-07:00

While the toothy monkfish will not win any beauty pageants, the tail meat is oh so tasty. It took a few trips to the market to find a couple of fillets of this poor man's lobster and when I did I hoarded the bounty until I had the (very lengthy) list of ingredients on hand to make this dish. And let me tell you, assembling this meal is not for the novice cook. It's not so much technically difficult, as time consuming and involves cooking at a rapid fire pace. The process would have been made easier had I had my mise en place all set up in advance, but I was coming home late from work and hungry and it was time to eat! Thank goodness my sous chef Jeff was around and could break away from internet porn long enough to help me.

While I chopped up garlic, ginger, onion and red peppers I asked Jeff to cut up the monkfish fillets.

I should mention here that the only substitution I made for this dish was to use red peppers from my garden in lieu of the requested red bell pepper. I'm not sure of the exact name of these little guys. Perhaps they're Sante Fe chilies? In any case they are not hot at all, but rather sweet like the bell pepper. And since they're from my garden it was time to use them up. I'm digressing here, but I get such a satisfaction out of growing my own edibles. Herbs are easy. Tomatoes and peppers require a bit more effort (and more guano) but so worth it. I don't have to guess at the store what the pesticide load is for the vegetables I'm looking at and is it worth it to buy organic. Such a headache.

Anyway, the bright peppers got chopped up and sauteed with garlic, onion and ginger in sesame oil.

While the above mixture was sauteeing in the dutch oven, I got another skillet going on the stove and flash-fried some Chinese eggplant slices, in 2 batches, in sesame oil.

While keeping an eye on the eggplant slices so they wouldn't char too much, I added coconut milk, fish stock (actually shrimp stock I made and froze a while back, but you know close enough), curry powder, kaffir lime leaves, fish sauce, raw cane sugar and canned bamboo shoots to the dutch oven mixture. I allowed this to saute for good bit to blend the flavors.

Meanwhile, Jeff washed some baby bok choy.

I added vermicelli rice noodles to the coconut milk mixture and allowed to soften for a few minutes per the recipe instructions.

Then I added the monkfish fillets and stirred to mix up.

I got the bok choy from Jeff and placed them on top.

To keep him busy I then requested that he wash and chop up some cilantro. His favorite herb in the whole wide world!

To finish the meal, I added the previously fried eggplant and closed the lid on the dutch oven to allow all the ingredients inside to steam for a bit. I'm guessing that's where the steamed part of this recipe comes in although it's rather misleading. I view steaming as ingredients placed in a basket over simmering water but perhaps it's all semantics. Here's what our meal looked like when I opened the lid. Soft noodles in a very creamy richly flavored coconut broth with flaky tender monkfish and the assorted vegetables.

I spooned this rather messy mixture into bowls and topped only mine with cilantro.

What I really enjoyed here was the wonderfully flavored coconut sauce. The combination of just a slight amount of Madras curry powder with the other flavorings created a very unique broth. I don't know that I've ever eaten anything like this at Asian restaurants. And of course, the monkfish was the star of the show. It was perfectly tender and flaky with a texture just like lobster (amazing!) although the taste was definitely more fishy, not in a bad way, but you could certainly tell you were eating fish. It didn't have the sweetness of lobster if that makes sense.

I loved all the other components as well, but not necessarily the way they were presented together. For example I had my doubts about adding dry vermicelli rice noodles directly to the coconut soup mixture. I was worried they'd get bloated and soggy really fast. They ended up having a decent texture (soft though, not at all al dente) as the soup didn't cook for too long at the end, however I really would have prefered to cook the noodles separately and then pour the broth over. Likewise with the eggplant. I absolutely love eggplant prepared this way, charred in oil, tender and caramelized at the same time, with crispy edges. But once these slices were mixed in with the soup the soft flesh of the eggplant began to fall apart. It would have made for a nicer presentation to place the eggplant slices on top of the coconut broth mixture after spooning it into a bowl.

Otherwise, no complaints. This was a fabulous and tasty meal. I'm not going to mark this as a keeper for the simple reason that I won't buy monkfish again. It's extremely tasty and I wanted to at least try it once, but it's also on the seafood watch list. I can see myself making a version of this soup again, perhaps with a fish like cod (or even shrimp), and served over rice or noodles. I love the veggie component and can imagine experimenting with other seasonal leafy greens.

Salad recap

2009-07-30T10:58:00.001-07:00

I don't have a new recipe review for you today and as it is, I didn't bring my camera. Since I finished the salad section in the cookbook (yay!) I was thinking I should go over those that made most of an impression on me, good or otherwise. On the whole this has not been my favorite chapter. I love salads. And most of these were fine, but I feel like I've eaten better and dare I say, more unique ones, on my own and in restaurants than those featured in the cookbook. Without further ado, here's the salad popularity contest of the recipes that jump out, at the top of my head.

Most unique: Pondicherry Lentil Salad

Most unloved: Tangy Jicama Salad

Most potential to be great with just a little tweaking: Basil and Blood Orange Salad (in fact I may try this again with my winter crop of spinach, that I plan to plant, and with the addition of goat cheese)

Most surprisingly enjoyable: Spinach and Black Plum Salad

And here's the play by play of the rest: List of salads

Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy some of the other salad recipes as well. Other than the jicama disaster all of them were edible. But you know, eh. Not everyone can be the queen of the ball. As I mentioned before I would have like to see more Asian/Indian inspired fusion salads. You know more spice, more zing. More different from the ordinary. The Pondicherry salad, for example, was definitely headed in the right direction. That being said, some of these recipes are good jumping off points for further experimentation and the addition of more ingredients.

Fresh Green Beans with Lentils and Coconut. Page 180.

2009-07-28T12:19:00.000-07:00

To accompany stir-fry #1 I made this stir-fry #2. The most difficult part here was cleaning and cutting the greens beans. This gives you an idea of how easy the whole thing was.

To start cooking, I toasted some mustard seeds, white gram lentils and dried chilies in oil.

Added green beans. Cooked a bit.

Added shredded unsweetened coconut. And cooked a bit more.

While I really liked the combination of green beans and coconut, my main complaint about this recipe was the gram lentils. They never softened. So it was tough on the teeth to be eating hard seed size pebbles mixed in with the more succulent green beans. White gram lentils can be used successfully. What this dish needed is some chicken stock or water and a good bit of simmering to soften the lentils. With the addition of liquid this surely would have been better. But as it is I enjoyed the other green bean stir fry much more.

Camilla's Eggplant. Page 178.

2009-07-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

I've been trying hard to motivate myself to post about this recipe just as I try (usually fruitlessly) to motivate myself to workout. The workout thing may now be happening on a regular basis due to a truly sadistic drill seargeant who I thought was a friend. A friend who takes genuine pleasure in kicking the ass of yours truly in a newly devised boot camp. I keep telling myself the pain is worth it.

And well, finally, I'm writing up the joys and tribulations of this eggplant dish. What it is though, is a ratatouille. And it's not the best one either. Sure the ingredients and preparation are simple and easy which is certainly always a plus, it just doesn't coalesce into an outstanding meal. It's edible, but not great.

To begin I harvested fresh cherry tomatoes from my garden. Have I mentioned how the garden is (mostly) exploding this year? The single cherry tomato plan especially, has taken over a good portion of the garden bed and seems in no hurry to stop production anytime soon. The only bane of my existence is the heat, which necessitates daily watering and causes the poor tomatoes to burst inside a wee bit. You can see it in the yellow discoloration.

I also chopped a good amount of the shallots and cut up eggplant into pretty good sized chunks. Here I started caramelizing the shallots.

After some time I added the eggplant chunks, dried red chilies and herbs. It was fresh oregano and thyme I think, and they came from the garden if you care that is.

I cooked the mixture for a good 15 minutes longer than the book recommended as it took this long to soften the eggplant. In the meantime I made madeleines and read Proust. I also plucked some fresh basil from the garden to finish this dish.

Once somewhat softened I added sliced sun-dried tomatoes (which I had soaked in oil) and the cut-up cherry tomatoes.

This got cooked just a bit longer to soften the tomatoes then I added the fresh robust basil leaves and removed from the heat.

For whatever reason, I was alone at home that night and I ate this somewhat disappointing concoction with some penne in front of the TV. It wasn't horrible. I ate it. But it was nothing special. Ratatouille is one of those classic dishes that needs to be done right. In the past I have made mine in the oven, roasting the eggplant and tomatoes to bring out their flavor and give the edges a nice char. Here I feel like a lot of the steps were unnecessary while crucial things were omitted. For example the dried chilies were totally inappropriate for this. They remained indigestible and tough while posing pretty successfully as succulent tomatoes due to the vibrant red color. On the other hand I think it would have been worthwhile to have taken the extra step of peeling the egglant (makes it more tender) and blanching and peeling the tomatoes to remove the skins. And if this is a fusion cookbook (I do think it aspires in that direction) why not do something totally different and use Chinese eggplant. Oh well. Signed sealed delivered. On to the next, hopefully more rewarding, recipe.

Black Grapes and Baby Arugula. Page 56

2009-07-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had 8 girls over for a pizza party. I made the pizza crusts and had some toppings available. The guests brought additional items and we baked up about 5 pizzas. Besides a couple of tweaks to my no-knead pizza dough, I learned that people are pretty specific about what they like (and don't like) on their pizza. I think my favorite (and that of a couple other people) was my caramelized onion, roasted garlic and venison sausage concoction. But we also had some other awesome combinations. Really what's not to love about truffle oil with mushrooms (yum!) or gorgonzola cheese (with anything, yes please).

To suplement all that thin crust goodness I made this black grapes, arugula and pear salad (Padma seems to have forgotten the salad part on the end of this recipe title) and we had a great meal accompanied by plenty of wine and later, quickly made frozen yogurt plus spontaneously defrosted leftover birthday cakes. The only thing I'd rather not think about is being on the losing team of a game of Guesstures, but so it goes.

So then, moving on. For this salad I sliced in half about 2 dozen grapes and stuck them in the fridge to languish until the party evening.

I got home from work in the nick of time and since my friend Nicky was the first to arrive I put her to work slicing up some bartlett pears while I gently tossed baby arugula leaves with cilantro leaves and the halved black grapes.

Nicky also cut up some pecorino cheese and we tossed that into the greens. I set the big bowl of salad out on the table with some balsamic vinegar and olive oil on the side, instead of tossing the dressing with the greens. And it worked great. We added oil and vinegar to taste and I greatly enjoyed this. Finally! A rounded salad, with a variety of interesting flavors. And best of all cheese! Not that I needed it really, what with all the pizza. But anyways, this is a great combination: sharp peppery arugula, juicy sweet grapes and pears, enough herbiness from the cilantro and a good amount of aged dairy flavor from the cheese. I can definitely see myself making this again, perhaps substituting spinach for the arugula or even using a baby greens mix. And can I let you in on a little secret? I took the finished photo on the day after the party and it still looked okay, so I guess you could say this is a salad that keeps well, in fridge, for at least overnight. Just keep the dressing off it. Oh and I should also mention that I didn't use any orange oil. That blasted orange oil again. Maybe I need to look into purchasing some.

Sauteed Sweet Potato and Lima Beans. Page 174

2009-07-23T10:18:00.000-07:00

The other day for dinner, I didn't feel like cooking, but I still made 2 stir-fries. I am hardcore. For this dish I boiled sweet potatoes until soft then peeled and cut them into largish chunks. I was watering my pathetic garden outside while the potatoes boiled and I think they got a touch too soft. Oh well, they still tasted fine.

I started sauteeing chopped up onion, mustard seeds and dried hot pepper and also, in a separate pot, boiled some frozen lima beans until cooked.

After the onions were softened I combined them with the cooked lima beans and after a bit, to the same wok, added the sweet potatoes.

I let the whole thing cook and mellow a bit then I topped only half of it with chopped cilantro. That would be my half as Jeff totally dislikes cilantro. Weirdo.

To break up the monotony of basmati rice I served this with rice noodles and of course we had the other stir-fry to eat. There was nothing bad about this dish. I like sweet potatoes. I like lima beans. I like stir-fries. Naturally I liked this dish. Simple, healthy and fairly easy.

Sauteed Cauliflower with Anise and Cashews. Page 188.

2009-07-21T10:52:00.000-07:00

I threw this dish together for dinner a while back. I purchased about 2 lbs of cauliflower, washed it and cut up into florets.

Right before cooking, I chopped some shallots, garlic and dried red peppers.

To begin dinner I sauteed anise seeds, shallots, garlic and dried pepper in a wok. To make things more fun I added a fresh red pepper from my garden. Party time!

After a bit of stir-frying I threw in the cauliflower and cooked until lightly charred at which point I added in a 1/2 cup of cashews and cooked further until the cauliflower had softened and the cashews were nicely toasted.

In the meantime there was some basmati rice steaming in a slow cooker and once the cauliflower dish was done we sat down to it with the rice.

This was certainly very easy to put together. It's healthy. It's vegetarian. And it tastes reasonably good, but it didn't wow me. When we ate this with basmati rice we kept adding Braggs to it for the salt, so clearly some additional flavorings would have been nice.

Pan-Asian Lettuce Cups with Curried Beef. Page 166.

2009-07-20T14:02:00.000-07:00

In the introduction to this recipe Padma describes this ground meat creation as being a hybrid of an Indian dish called keema and of Thai lettuce wraps. The keema is often made with lamb and is not served on lettuce leaves, but rather with rice. Given that the beef is not a necessity and that we still have a good amount of Bambi in the freezer I opted to use ground venison in place of the cow meat.

As I was stuck at work late this particularly hot and oppresive evening, I texted my trusty sous chef Jeff and he chopped up the onion, garlic, ginger and serrano peppers for me. Then, all that remained when I finally arrived home was to saute the minced vegetables in oil until slightly softened.

After which point I added the ground venison and stirred to brown and break up into small pieces. I flavored the mixture with curry powder, amchoor (ground dried mangoes) and soy sauce.

After turning down the heat I gently sauteed this for about 30 minutes until well cooked and mostly dry. It was not the most appetizing color but it smelled wonderful and rich. Suffice it to say it brought Jeff down from his "man room" to the kitchen.

I removed the dutch oven from the burner and stirred in some chopped basil and mint fresh from the garden, finishing with a generous squeeze of fresh lemon.

Naturally, I served the meat on butter lettuce leaves and we greatly enjoyed it. It was spicy, minty, lemony and hearty. Surprisingly filling given that there is no rice or other carbs. I must admit I had my doubts about adding lemon juice to red meat, but it actually worked great here and tasted very fresh. After Jeff and I devoured all we could handle for dinner there was even a bit left over and it made for a quick tasty lunch the next day for a friend and I.

This may sound odd, but in a way this reminds me of those lettuce wraps at PF Chang's. I know it's different meats. PFC uses pork I think? But the idea is similar. Imagine this as a richer, meatier and spicier version of the PFC wraps.

Cast-iron Chicken with Preserved Lemon. Page 112.

2009-07-17T11:13:00.000-07:00

I decided to drag out my jar of self-preserved lemons and knock this dish out. If you recall I made the lemon tea sandwiches not too terribly long ago with some mixed results, so I had a thought in the back of my mind that Jeff may want to skip this dinner and go get some Tex-Mex or something. No such luck. He actually enjoyed it this time. Mercy me.

Without further ado, I cut up one preserved lemon. Amazing isn't it, how it still looks like a fresh lemon.

I also, wrestled, er.. cut up one whole organic locally raised chicken and browned in batches in a stainless skillet.

Once browned, I nestled all parts of the bird into said skillet and put into the oven for 30 minutes checking often to make sure it wasn't getting overdone.

It came out crisp and smelling magnificent.

While the chicken had been baking, in a separate saucepan I sauteed some onions, garlic and the preserved lemon then added chicken stock and thyme and allowed to simmer for a bit to cook down and create a thicker consistency for sauce.

I finished this mixture with chopped parsley and poured it over the roast chicken.

I had another pot going on the stove with cous cous and we enjoyed our roasted sauce smothered bird with the tiny pasta. Once I recovered from the unexpected surprise of Jeff liking this, I discovered that I too, liked this dish a good deal. The quality of the chicken meat makes a big difference in a simple preparation like this and this was the best of birds. The meat was perfectly done, if I say so myself, and was well accented by the tangy ever so slightly bitter lemony sauce. I liked the preserved lemon pieces in the sauce. It's not my very favorite and for perhaps that reason I probably won't make this again. There are, after all, so many other novel chicken recipes to try.

Pondicherry Lentil Salad. Page 48.

2009-07-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who is Indian and he really liked this salad. I did too. In fact I'm eating some right now, for a late lunch, as we speak. Easy to make and nice for this relentless heat. The most difficult thing here was obtaining the beluga black lentils. I didn not find them anywhere locally and ended up ordering some from the American Spice company. They aren't expensive but it's the shipping that gets you.

In any case I boiled a pound of the lentils until soft (but not mushy) drained, cooled and placed them in a large salad bowl.

I added cubed yellow bell pepper and fuji apple. One of each if you must know.

To flavor the salad I poured in fresh squeezed lemon juice, good olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I seasoned with sea salt and gave it a good stir. Meanwhile, on the stove, I toasted some fresh minced ginger and unsweetened coconut flakes with sesame oil.

I topped the salad with the toasted flavorings and some chopped parsley.

I think it's safe to say that this is my favorite salad in Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet. Not only do I have a soft spot in my heart for chopped salads as a good respite from all those torn green leafy things, I appreciate the easy exoticism of this dish. Hearty, tangy and complex with a minimum of effort. Certainly a bit more work than opening a bag of pre-washed greens, but not complicated in the least. And next time I don't think I'll even go to the trouble of ordering beluga lentils. The French green lentils would work just fine here.

Andouille Sausage with Black Lentils and Artichokes. Page 140.

2009-07-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

I'm still catching up on posting recipes I made over the 4th of July weekend. Such a busy bee. I brought this lentil stew (that's really what it is) to 1 friend's house along with the herbaceous salad. I started by cooking some French green lentils as I couldn't for the life of me locate any black ones. They must exist, just not in Austin Texas.

As they were simmering away on the stove I sliced some andouille sausage. It was still a bit frozen but that's okay, it made it easier to slice.

Plus I chopped up some cute little cippolini onions.

The stew came together pretty quickly. After sauteeing the onions, garlic and sausauge together I garnished it generously with fresh herbs and a bit later added the cooked lentils and canned artichokes. Blast those artichokes! I have not found any frozen ones and have been resorting to the canned which are fine, but a mite mushier.

At this point the dish got a nice dose of homemade chicken stock and I packed it up and brought to my friend's house to simmer for another 20 minutes after which time I finished with buttermilk and cooked just a tad more. I should note here that I was out of buttermilk and since I needed just under a cup I made my own by curdling milk with a bit of vinegar. Works great.

All in all this was a good hearty stew. It helps if you really like lentils, which I do, but not everyone does. It was nicely broken up by the bits of andouille sausage which made it interesting. Also, even though a good amount of sage was called for it wasn't overpowering here at all. I may make it again, I may not. I'll see if I get a hankering for it in winter, in front of the fire perhaps. This is one of those filling cold-weather dishes you want when you get home all chilled, and all you can muster is to sit in front of the fireplace in sweats and watch trash TV.

Sweet and Sour Chicken Salad. Page 122.

2009-07-12T08:54:00.000-07:00

In spare moments on the couch I often read ahead in the cookbook so I can plan for ingredients and purchases. I'm not dedicated enough to keep a spreadsheet going, but I try to have some idea in my head or on my shopping lists of non-perishables I can buy or meat/seafood I can freeze for future meals. So I knew that for this chicken salad I would need some mango chutney and one thing I don't understand is why Padma didn't just include a recipe for said chutney in the cookbook. Instead she advises to buy the Sharwood brand if possible. I didn't see Sharwood and most others listed either an ungodly amount of sugar or worse yet, high fructose corn syrup. Not going to work. I poked around online a bit and came up with a recipe that promised to be more tangy and spicy as opposed to sweet. And I made it. Then set it aside in the fridge until I acquired the rest of the ingredients and the desire to make this dish.

That date happened to fall on 4th of July weekend when Jeff was out of town. Normally I have to work on the 4th of July but this year, miracle of miracles, I was off. Yahoo! I brought this salad and some homemade wheat bread to my friend's pool and it made a nice summer lunch to revive us in the 100 + degree heat.

I put this together by baking some chicken tenders in lemon juice for about 15-20 minutes until fully cooked but still tender.

Meanwhile I fried 6 slices of bacon, in batches. Mmm... bacon.

I chopped the chicken and bacon and mixed the 2 proteins in a bowl.

To finish, I added the rest of the ingredients, namely the mango chutney, capers, chopped red onion, cayenne pepper, olive oil and balsamic vinegar and mixed 'em up!

I tasted the chicken salad at this point and actually ended up adding a bit extra of the mango chutney to wet it more. And feeling that it was lacking a bit of crunch I mixed in some chopped scallions I had floating around in the fridge.

As mentioned I served this on whole wheat bread and it was quite nice. I'm partial to a good chicken salad and usually end up getting the gourmet kind with chopped grapes and celery and often walnuts or almonds. This was a nice change from the mayo based salad and is refreshing for summer. A big plus is you don't have to worry about the mayo spoiling if you're toting the salad to a picnic or whatnot. Overall a success but I can't help wishing there was more to it. More crunch. More spice. Next time I'll probably add that chopped celery and even a bit of diced serranos. And if Jeff's not around to eat it I'll even throw in some cilantro.

A Very Herbaceous Salad. Page 47.

2009-07-10T10:48:00.000-07:00

Jeff left me alone for the 4th of July while he hightailed it to Houston so to keep myself gainfully occupied I made dinner and brought it over to a friend's house to watch movies. We saw Paul Blart Mall Cop (just don't do it!) and Serenity (again for me. love it!). Between dinner and the 2 movies we ended up staying up till around 1pm, then got up the next day and fried ourselves at the pool and Barton Springs in the 100+ degree heat. I had some English cucumber and baby green left over from making the seared tuna salad so I decided to clean out the crisper and make this recipe. I started by chopping up some fresh herbs: dill, parsley and mint.

I mixed these in with organic baby greens. The recipe actually calls for romaine lettuce, but as you can see here I willfully deviated from the instructions. The baby greens are nice because they come in this plastic clamshell that is easy to transport so it was perfect for packing up and bringing along to Michael's house.

Over the greens I layered sliced English cucumber.

In the meantime, I made my own blender mayonnaise from a Joy of Cooking recipe. Basically egg, vinegar, bit of mustard and a good amount of oil. Easy easy easy. And tastes so much better than jarred.

I whisked a quick dressing of mayo, red wine vinegar, salt and freshly ground black pepper. I packed this up in a separate, tiny plastic container and brought along to the gathering.

Once we were ready to dine I poured the dressing over the salad and we ate. My verdict: easy but boring. It was a nice fresh green salad, but there was nothing special about it. Some cherry tomatoes might have been a nice addition or some kind of nut or seed for crunch. Or being Russian, I can see some hardboiled egg. In fact this reminds me so much of a salad my family would make in the peak of the summer tomato and cucumber season: chopped tomato, chopped cucumber, chopped dill, sour cream, salt and pepper to taste. Sooo good and nostalgic. In any event, I can put these kind of salads together in my sleep, and often do, to bring for lunch to work. But in a fusion cuisine book like this why not stick to more creative and exciting recipes? Padma says that a friend of hers often serves this at parties and that's fine, but I suspect that like me, she doesn't need an exact recipe for what is basically a throw some lettuce and herbs together melange. Oh well, i'm a bitter-smug-know-it-all I suppose.

Spinach and Black Plum Salad. Page 50.

2009-07-09T10:44:00.000-07:00

This week I went on a Tuesday playdate with my dear teacher friend who is off for the summer, of course. Yay! I love having a friend to hang out with on Tuesdays. Usually it's me by my lonesome. Sniff. In any case we had a lunch of some yummy pho (love that stuff!) then we set off on a very adult field trip for some wine tasting at local wineries. Central Texas actually has a fairly booming wine industry and it's fun to hit different areas and different wineries each time. So by the time we got home we had had our fair share of wine + some cheese and crackers along the way. I had all the ingredients for this salad at home so I ended up making this for myself, Tina and Jeff. And I threw together a quick mac and cheese with the ingredients left over from the first endeavor. I did leave out the stick of butter this time!

But to continue this impromtu salad week, I threw together some baby spinach and mint, the mint came from my garden.

I topped this off with some sliced ripe plums. I couldn't find black plums and ended up using the red.

Meanwhile, I whisked together a simple vinaigrette of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and yuzu juice. The recipe called for 5 tbsps of olive oil, but I found that 3 was plenty. Additionally I did not find pure yuzu juice in any of the Asian markets and so ended up using a mixture of yuzu juice and vinegar that an employee at Asahi pointed me to.

I poured the dressing over this super-simple salad and we all really enjoyed it. To be honest it rather took me by surpise. I was griping about the salad recipes just recently and what do you know? This was good! The ripe plums completed the baby spinach perfectly and the dressing had just enough tang in it to make it all very interesting. A fantastic, light summer salad. And best of all, very easy.

Tuna and Red Bean Salad. Page 55.

2009-07-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

We're on a salad bender here this week. The other day Jeff picked up a nice ahi tuna steak at Costco and I made this quick salad. While tasty and nutritious there's something missing. We couldn't exactly put our fingers on it, but other than the lovely seared tuna, this was a bit bland. As I've written before, something tends to be missing in not a few of Padma's salad creations.

But moving on, I followed the instructions as written and made a very basic vinaigrette of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Instead of the dried oregano requested I used some fresh leaves from my garden.

While Jeff was heating up the grill for the tuna I mixed up kidney beans, artichoke hearts, sliced cucumber and chopped parsley in a bowl. My attempt to find frozen chokes per the recipe instructions were not successful so I settled for canned artichoke hearts.

I layered this mixture over fresh organic baby greens. Mmm how I love those! I added fresh tomatoes from my garden only to my salad as Jeff doesn't like raw tomatoes. Weirdo.

Jeff, my trusty sous chef, brushed the tuna steak with olive oil and grilled very briefly, until just seared. He's starting to get very good at this just-seared thing!

Look at those impressive grill marks!

To finish the salad we sliced the tuna as thin as we could get it, layered it's ribbons over the greens and drizzled with the dressing. As we were eating our meal Jeff and I reflected on how we love seared tuna with an Asian dressing. You know that finger-licking good sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger mixture that's become quite popular in restaurants in recent years. For a good reason. Specifically there's a place here in town we like that does a pretty mean crusted seared tuna. I think we would have enjoyed this more had it had more of an Asian style dressing. Or even just more of a kick. But as it was, it certainly wasn't bad and we finished it all. It badly needed salt and I personally found the parsley to be a bit too strong in this whole combination, but one of the saving graces was the fresh oregano from my garden.

Next time I would opt for more herby, more tangy, more kicky.

Asian Cole Slaw with Lima Beans and Red Cabbage. Page 41.

2009-07-07T11:20:00.000-07:00

How to make a refreshing summer slaw. Start with a whole red cabbage.

Shred it very thinly (food processor works great for this). While you're shredding the cabbage add 2 carrots in there as well and 2 serrano chilies. Dump it all into a bowl.

Meanwhile, cook about a cup or so of frozen lima beans or edamame works great too and add that to the cabbage mixture with some kosher salt.

Then, make a vinaigrette of equal parts lemon juice and sesame oil. Add a tablespoon of rice (or white wine) vinegar to it as well.

Pour the dressing over the cole slaw and combine well. Allow to sit in the fridge for at least 6 to 8 hours before serving. Then top with some chopped cilantro (if you like that sort of thing).

Delicious. Tangy, refreshing and lightly spicy. I even ate this for lunch up to 2 days after making it and it still tasted great. So nice to have a slaw recipe that doesn't involve mayo. I'm thinking of variations: perhaps add chopped green onions or scallions, grated ginger, sliced almonds or even some dried cranberries for a bit of sweetness.

While we're on the topic of salads here, I only have 2 left to make, after I make the spinach and plum one this week that is. I have all the ingredients. You know for a former model to have written this cookbook, the salad section is strangely underwhelming. This slaw was one of my favorites, the carrot salad was quite nice. But the basil and blood orange one was disappointing despite sounding so great. Likewise, the herbacious salad I made over this past weekend (review coming, I promise!) was simply okay. Somehow there's something missing. Too much greens, not enough crunch, boring vinaigrettes, hmm... Missing something that would make it more interesting. Something about them rather plain jane...

Zucchini Pudding. Page 195.

2009-07-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

This zucchini pudding was served alongside the mac 'n cheese and Korean short ribs and was quite tasty if not exactly healthy. I started by cutting up some zucchini and cooking for 15 minutes in boiling water.

I crushed up some very gourmet saltine crackers.

And cut up some dill.

To assemble the casserole (and that's really what it is) I placed a cut-up stick of butter in the bottom of a 9" glass plan.

I then added the drained zucchini pieces, cheddar cheese, goat cheese and a beaten egg along with the dill. I smashed the incorporated the components with a potate masher.

I finished by adding the crushed saltines, canned corn and cayenned and stirred until fully mixed.

I topped with some remaining shredded cheddar and more crushed saltine crackers and baked in a 350 oven until golden and crispy.

The filling was very tasty. I loved the succulent mix of zucchini with the 2 cheeses and enough dill was called for that you could really taste it's herby flavor. If I make this again I'd omit the butter. A whole stick, really Padma? And quite honestly the crushed saltines on top didn't do anything for me. I like the cheddar on top, just not the cracker meal.

Chicken a la Nueced de la India. Page 110.

2009-07-05T08:52:00.000-07:00

You know how sometimes you try a recipe with very familiar ingredients and end up with something totally unexpected and awesome? I love that. I started here with a nut (legume) everyone knows, and roasted it. Yes those are cashews. I know I burned a couple but don't worry I ate them so they wouldn't contaminate the whole batch. I then pureed the nuts into a powder in the food processor.

Meanwhile, I brought out my chicken breasts from the fridge, dried them, dipped lightly in flour then pan fried until lightly browned.

I set the chicken breasts aside then sauteed some shallots, garlic, fresh thyme and crushed red pepper flakes.

After a while I added honey and chicken broth. Instead of my usual homemade stock I cheated and dissolved a boillon cube in 2 cups of water, but hush don't tell anyone. After the sauce simmered a bit I whisked in the cashew powder, stirring briskly so it wouldn't clump.

I brought out the warmed chicken and plated it with the sauce spooned over. And wow! This was an incredible dish, much more than the sum of it's parts. The cashew powder blended with the chicken broth to become a rich, buttery tasting sauce. It was nutty, buttery and lightly honeyed all at the same time. Definitely a repeater for the future and quite easy to make. We ate this with cous cous but I bet it would be nice with rice also.

BBQ Korean Short Ribs. Page 138.

2009-07-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

I know Padma talks about eating Korean short ribs at a restaurant close to her spa, but I have to wonder if she's ever actually made this recipe. That's probably a potent accusation, but my first moment of doubt came when I looked at the full page photo spread of this dish. It features thick short ribs, best conducive to braising not the Korean galbi (kalbi? I see both) which are cut thinly on the cross section to be ideal for hot fast grilling. Having eaten Korean bbq before and knowing the difference I picked up some frozen ribs (or some call them riblets) at an Asian market. Since these were a bit fatty I loosely trimmed off the white parts.

Then I made my marinade. This was my second moment of doubt. Frankly, the call for 2 whole cups of soy sauce made me blanch a bit. In her defense Padma does ask for light soy sauce and what I ended up picking up at the store was called "thin soy sauce" so perhaps that's the issue. But doing a quick search online most recipes call for about 1 cup of soy sauce for about 4 lbs of ribs, which is what I had. Anyways, I still made the marinade as directed, with sugar, garlic, sesame seeds and fresh chives.

And... marinated the ribs for a few hours.

Once our guests arrived and had a few drinks in them we fired up the grill. Jeff was the grill master on this one and he did an awesome job. This is another part where the directions in the cookbook were woefully inadequate. Pretty much it consisted of turn on the grill (it was geared to a charcoal grill anyway) and barbecue ribs until done. Really Sherlock? No way. Thanks a lot. That helped. NOT. Jeff had the foresight to go online for a quick search. We discovered that what we needed to do was get the grill hot, as in really hot and grill briefly for about 2-3 minutes per side. We were also warned that because of the sugar in the marinade to beware of flare-ups and the possibility of meat sticking to the grill. Thanks internet. And also thanks to our Asian friends who we grilled (har har) about the proper way to do this. Here's my grill master at work, or his hand anyway.

After all that, these turned out perfectly done and lip-smackingly sticky and tasty. They were a bit salty for my taste (thanks 2 cups of soy sauce) but the others seemed to like them pretty well. They probably would have been less saline had we eaten the ribs with rice as intended in a Korean bbq meal, but since we had the mac and cheese and all. And the main reason I'm not reporting this as a keeper recipe (despite the fact that I enjoyed it) is that if I make the ribs again the marinade will be from a different recipe.

Mexican Macaroni and Cheese. Page 190.

2009-07-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I had my neighbors and a few others over for dinner. I chose this macaroni and cheese side-dish because I figured it'd be good for a crowd and the effects of a whole stick of butter, 2 and 1/3 cups of grated cheese and whole milk would be spread among several different bellies. The recipe called for ditalini pasta so I picked up a bag. It's also known as salad macaroni.

I proceeded to chop up some shallots and sauteed those in a big pot with pickled jalapenos, dried oregano and a tiny bit of turbinado sugar.

Once the shallots were caramelized I added butter, whole milk and the ditalini and then (rather weirdly) shredded cheddar, shredded jack cheese and goat cheese. The instructions said to cook this whole thing for about 30 minutes stirring very frequently.

The strangeness of adding cheese so early in the cooking process didn't fully hit me until the mixture got more thickened and the cheese was gritty tasting. Can you see the cheese grit on the spoon?

Jeff tasted some at this point after I complained of the texture and since it was going into the over he thought it would be fine. And it was. I topped it with the remaining cheddar and baked at 350 then broiled to get a nice golden crust.

This was very rich and pretty tasty. It disappeared fast so I guess the others didn't hate it. My main issues with this were (1) the needless addition of cheese so early in the process, (2) the use of a whole stick of butter! this made the mac and cheese a bit greasy when baking (you can see the butter bubbling up at the edges in the below photo) and (3) there was nothing particularly Mexican about it. Sure I added some pickled jalapenos and a piddling amount of the dried oregano called for, but that did not nothing to cut through the heavy cheese and milk butter sauce. Plus I liked the idea of using goat cheese, but I'm afraid it too, got lost in the thickness of the less wholesome ingredients. If I make this again it would be totally different. I'd cut out the butter altogether, add a LOT more jalapenos or even fresh serranos and probably use fresh oregano for more of an herby punch. The milk stays. Maybe less cheddar and more jack cheese? But really, who am I kidding, I hardly ever eat like this and there's no need for me to be making mac and cheese at home and having it too readily available.

Pochettes of Feta, Tomato, and Basil. Page 33.

2009-07-01T09:36:00.000-07:00

Since I was already working with fillo dough for the Moroccan chicken pie I decided to kill 2 recipes with one stone and make these pochettes as well. I started by making a very simple filling of tomatoes, basil (from the garden) and feta. I seasoned with some pepper flakes and salt and set this mixture aside.

Then, I prepared some fillo dough, keeping it moist between damp kitchen towels. I cut rough 8" squares, though to be honest they looked more rectangular and filled with the tomato/feta/basil mixture.

I shaped these into loose pochettes twisting the tops and brushing generously with melted butter. Aren't they precious?

They went in the oven for a good 15 minutes and came out nicely browned and crisped. These were great fresh out of the oven and warm. The feta was just slightly melted and the heat mellowed the flavor of the basil just enough so it wasn't too sharp. The tomatoes provided the needed moisture. I wouldn't recommend letting these sit, they start to get a bit soggy and the flavor just isn't as good when cold.

Musing...

2009-06-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

I'm looking around online today and thinking random thoughts. I have 42 recipes left in Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet (that's our of 121 total). If I'm doing my math correctly I'm 2/3rds done. What to do after I'm completely finished. What indeed... Sunday Suppers at Lucques seems highly rated by food bloggers and appears to be a real challenge. At 132 recipes it's comparable in length to my current project book. On the other hand Chez Panisse is such a restaurant institution and perhaps I need some down to earth, healthy fare after these recent indulgences. And that's not even including the mac and cheese and zucchini pudding I'm making later on this week for a cookout. Each one contains a stick of butter. Oof.

In other dilemmas where am I going to find monkfish for the last seafood recipe in the book. I checked the usual sources, Central Market and MT Supermarket (our Asian store here) and neither had it. Perhaps there's a seasonality thing. Or most likely a sustainability thing and probably I best avoid a fish that's on the Seafood Watch list. People say it's poor man's lobster so perhaps that's what I need to sub. But it also appears that Pacific halibut or cod would work or perhaps even striped bass. I imagine I'll figure something out.

Moroccan Bisteeya (Curried Chicken Pie). Page 126.

2009-06-29T09:38:00.000-07:00

The other day I was invited, and went, to a potluck at my friend Michael's house. I chose to make this pie because it makes a lot and seemed like a good portable thing to bring. While time consuming it turned out to be a big hit at the party!

I started by browning 2 lbs of ground chicken (I used ground chicken thighs) with curry powder, worstershire sauce, anar dana, ginger, tomatoes and a few other flavorings. Here's a gratuitous shot of fresh tomatoes, some of them from my very own garden.

I made the mixture a day ahead and set it to cool in the fridge.

When the day came for the potluck I allowed my fillo dough to come to room temperature then got ready to work with it. Fillo dough is notoriously fragile and I had to work fast to shape 8 sheets into a 9" round pan, brushing with butter in between each whisper thin sheet.

I spooned the meat mixture into the pie and folded the sheets over the filling one by one. Easier said than done. The sheets got dry and crackly at the edges.

But eventually the mission was accomplished. I sealed up the pie nice and tight and brushed with more melted butter.

I placed the pie in the oven to bake for about 15 minutes then flipped it onto a foil lined baking sheet to brown the other side.

I baked an additional 15 minutes or so until well crisped on the outside and oddly enough, rather puffy.

To finish, I toasted some almonds with butter, nutmeg and cinnamon then spread the over the pie with powdered sugar.

If I may say so myself the end result was beautiful. And tasty. I made the minor mistake of baking this a few hours before the party and it got rather deflated and started leaking chicken juice. I had to put it back in the oven to crisp it up a bit. When I brought it to the potluck I kept explaining to people that it was a Moroccan chicken pie lest anyone get the idea that it was a sweet pie, as opposed to savory. I'm such a dork. Next time I will definitely bake this right before serving. The taste was pretty incredible and I kept getting compliments on it. I had tasted the filling by itself when I made it at home before the party, but in combination with the crispy fillo and fragrant toasted almonds it was quite amazing. I've never had anything like this before and I love it. I had some filling left over from this pie and I made a few triangle shaped fillo pastries and stuck in the fridge to bake over the next few days. As it happened Jeff was running late to the potluck and didn't get to have any pie there, so it was nice to have something for both of us the next couple of days. One thing I learned here is to either bake the fillo pastries right away or to freeze them. Othewise the filling slowly but surely seeps into the fillo dough and makes it soggy. Next time perhaps I'll make a few of these in small fillo pockets and freeze them until ready to bake for a party or whatnot.

Pineapple and Pomegranate Crumble. Page 218.

2009-06-28T09:32:00.000-07:00

This is the second crumble I made in the span of a few days. You may remember my attempt at the green apple and plum dessert. From the begining I worried that I wouldn't be able to fully recreate this particular recipe due to my hitherto failure to find pomegranates. And what did I find when I was shopping at Central Market the other day, frozen pomegranates. Genius! Where have you been all my life?? I could have properly made the salmon timbales and the cucumber tea sandwiches, without subsitutions. As they say though, better late than never.

So I asked Jeff to pick up a pineapple at the store and we got rolling with this dessert.

Since the last crumble topping didn't exactly wow me with it's texture, I decided to blend the flour, heritage flakes, butter and the various sugars in a food processor to give it a more even crumbly texture.

Additionally, I made this crumble in 4 ramekins rather than a big baking dish. I filled it with the cut fruit and quiet honestly didn't add any sugar as the pineapple was very sweet and ripe.

Then I topped the fruit with the crumbly mixture and baked at 350.

This was a nice juicy dessert. Pertfectly baked sweet pineapple offset by the occasional tart crunchy tang of pomegranate seeds. We ate this for dessert one night and I enjoyed the rest on another morning with plain yogurt.

White Fish in Coconut Milk with Curry Leaves. Page 106.

2009-06-27T09:43:00.000-07:00

I have had a pretty spectacular birthday week so far. Besides the trip to Inks Lake, I went to happy hour with some friends yesterday then came home to Jeff making me a fantastic lamb meal. Mmm, how I do love lamb. My man bought rib chops and grilled them for a few minutes on each side and it was the perfect preparation for it. Seared on the outside and very rare on the inside. It was the first time grilling lamb for both of us and you should have seen us poring over Joy of Cooking and a (mostly useless) grilling cookbook to figure out the proper time and temp. Tonight (if I'm still awake) I'll be heading out downtown with the girls for some food and drinks.

But moving on from all the birthday blather, blah, blah, blah, I made this fish dish (ha! that rhymes) not too long ago and both Jeff and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I started with some fish fillets and cut them up. Since the recipe doesn't specify an exact type of fish I bought the wild caught species that was on sale that day which happened to be rockfish. I'd never cooked it before and in the end it was fine, fairly flaky, a good texture that soaked up the sauce well, although just a tad bit fishy and bony. In the future I don't think I'd choose this if bass or snapper are available.

Enough about that though, I heated up oil in a dutch oven and started sauteeing onions, garlic, ginger, serrano peppers, fresh curry leaves and after a while threw in the curry powder. This doesn't ask for much curry powder and in the end it made for a nice mix of flavors.

Once the mixture cooked a bit more I added shredded carrots and then the coconut milk.

I finished the recipe by adding chunks of rockfish and cooking just for a few minutes until flaky.

We enjoyed this mild curry over basmati rice with cilantro (just for me) and there was plenty left for 2 lunches. I think what I liked best about this meal is how different of a curry it was. It wasn't pungent with curry powder spices in the traditional sense, but rather had a nice sweetness (from the carrots) just a hint of spice (from the peppers) and everything enveloped in the creaminess of coconut milk. Padma writes that tradition has it, this dish was created for an Englishwoman in India with shall we say, more European tastes, and I can see how this would be an enjoyable dish for non-Indian food eaters as well as those with more curry developed tastes.

Curried Chinese Long Beans with Black-eyed Peas. Page 170.

2009-06-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

I had the best of intentions to make this dish with chinese long beans (as specified in the recipe), those long ropy green strands, and I've even seen them at the Asian market. But we were coming back from a short trip out of town, more on that later, and decided to stop at the Farmer's Market on the way home to kill some time and stay out of traffic. And of course there they had some fresh locally raised green beans and I caved and bought them to make this dish. I knew that I already had the blackeyed peas at home so I bought just the green beans and a couple of tomatoes. I picked off the rest of the tomatoes off my Heatwave II plant at home. It's been struggling a bit so that's why the fruits are so dimpled and ugly looking.

I cleaned and trimmed the green beans, chopped the garlic and onion and got to work. First I toasted some mustard seeds then added the onion, garlic and curry leaves. Have I mentioned yet how much I've come to love curry leaves? They give a slightly sharp pungent taste to stir fries and curry type dishes. I finished the last of the little bag I had in the freezer. The texture is similar to that of bay leaves so they freeze quite well. And I have a small confession here. Once I got home I realized I was out of fresh ginger so I used about a teaspoon of the dry powder here and it seemed to work fine.

After a bit of sauteeing I added the chopped tomatoes. Farmer's market ones = plump and juicy, Katrina's = sadly unloved looking.

Then the green beans.

Then finally, the blackeyed peas and salt to taste.

The end result was a fresh, light but also hearty stir fry. We enjoyed it with basmati rice and had enough leftover for 2 lunches. Definitely a healthy, fairly quick, vegetarian weeknight dinner and next time I may even make it with those Chinese long beans.

In other news we had a nice overnight trip to a bed and breakfast in the sleepy Texas town of Burnet. The lodging was very close to the old historic square where everything (inexplicably) was closed! There was a bit of an alternate reality going on as cars were parked in the square and people were in them reading newspapers. I guess the good townspeople of Burnet prefer to relax in the front seat of their cars than on a park bench or bar stool. The hospitable owner of the B & B told us this was very nearly a dry town. Bars can only operate if they sell more food than alcohol.

We stayed at the Verandas, a charming bed and breakfast with extensive grounds and a koi pond.

The structure itself used to be a bordello and in fact most rooms have 2 doors, each opening onto a different porch.

We stayed outside in the cooling yard as long as we could and enjoyed some wine. Jeff got a real kick out of drinking his from a vintage PBR glass. After a glass or so we hightailed it inside into the A/C. Do you know it's been over 100 here for the llast few days and with the humidity index it's 109 or 110. It's this time of year that I would give anything to be in Alaska or maybe Montana. Anyways we went inside and played a game of Trivial Pursuit the winner of which is still hotly contested!

The next day we got up early, enjoyed a B & B breakfast and drove to Inks Lake. I don't know what possessed us to hike for a couple of miles or so. All I can say is I was never so thrilled to get into the water. The scene at Devil's Watering Hole was a fairly quiet and relaxed Wednesday. A few families with the kids on summer vacation. People jumping off the rocks nearby. The water and occasional breeze a nice coolant from the heat. All in all it was a nice relaxing birthday getaway (yes this is my b-day week) and isn't it amazing how leaving for just over 24 hours is enough at times to feel like one has really gotten away from the noise of the city.

Tangy Jicama Salad. Page 46.

2009-06-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

In an effort to make it through some of the salads in the cookbook I decided to tackle this one. I bought jicama, red bell pepper, an apple and a serrano chili.

I then proceeded to chop up all the ingredients, using my food processor to make this easier, and topped with fresh squeezed lemon juice.

Since one of us has a well documented aversion to cilantro I topped only my salad with the chopped herb. I tried a bit and had a very eh, meh reaction to it so I drizzled it with a bit of oil and added feta on top, all of my own volition.

That didn't really help matters all that much though. The salad didn't taste bad, it was just bland. The jicama was bland and chewy, the best part really was the tang of fresh granny smith apple. I've only had jicama before in very mild doses, wrapped in a springroll for example. And I could see this mixture acting as a relish along with meat or as a palate cleanser between courses, but on it's own it was not very exciting. Jicama is not meant to have a starring role in my opinion. So while we ate some of this salad, most of it ended up in the compost heap for the enjoyment of roaches and other critters.

Seafood Spaghettini with Chipotle and Green Olive Paste. Page 92.

2009-06-20T16:50:00.000-07:00

Per usual these days I'm late posting this recipe. I actually made this some time ago. I even remember getting these clams on a shopping expedition to Central Market where I mistakenly took someone's cart! Oh well all you need to know about that is I used mahogany clams vs. manila clams. They didn't have manilas at the seafood counter. Google reveals a chat on chowhound regarding the clam difference. It appears that they're fairly interchangeable. Anyways, I first made a paste using dried (which I soaked in water) chipotle peppers, olives, capers and some fresh oregano and thyme from the herb garden. My affection for chipotle peppers in adobo sauce is well documented but I hadn't previously cooked with dried chipotles and my, the flavor is out of this world! The paste was very tasty and I had a hard time shooing Jeff away from it with his crackers.

Instead of doing everything at once and having 3 pots and pans going on the stove as Padma instructs, I cooked the pasta, drained it and set it aside with some chopped parsley.

Then I set the chipotle paste to warm up over low heat and brought water to boil for the clams.

I boiled the clams with cut-up onions, lemon slices and fresh bay leaf.

Once the shells opened I drained them, added to the chipotle sauce and threw the pasta in to coat it well. This dish came together very quickly and we ate it warm licking the chipotle/olive sauce off the clam shells and slurping on the pasta. I love the combo of chipotle and olives (never would have thought of that!) and will definitely be making this again. It would be equally delicious with shrimp or just the pasta. Now that I'm thinking about this I need to whip up a batch of the sauce and just keep in a jar in the fridge for those quick impromptu pasta dinners.

Green Apple and Plum Crumble. Page 216.

2009-06-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some cooking with fruit lately. In addition to the recent granita, I baked some raspberry breakfast bars and blueberry muffins for a work meeting today. And last week I baked this crumble for a Sunday breakfast. I cut up some fresh plums and granny smith apple and mixed with 3 types of sugars, granulated, brown and turbinado.

Then I started a crumble topping by cutting in butter with flour.

The recipe instructs to mix this flour mixture with a variety of sugars and crushed Frosted Flakes. I don't know about you but I don't eat that processed stuff (that's saying it nicely!) so I found these more wholesome looking things called Heritage flakes in the bulk bin. I crushed those up and mixed with the butter mixture.

I assembled in a glass plan and baked at 350.

This baked for a while and the fruit got nice and soft but the top wasn't particularly brown so I put it under the broiler for a few minutes, a couple minutes too long judging by this photo.

This turned out tasty enough. The apple and plum slices were nice and soft and juice, the plum perhaps a bit tart, especially for Jeff's taste. I must say I wasn't impressed by the topping. It was fine, rather lackluster really. Perhaps it would have made a difference if I had used Frosted Flakes, but I have a serious objection to empty sugary calories like that. I've made a crumble or 2 in my life and what I like to use is granola pieces. Mixing granola with some flour and butter makes a crunchy delectable topping that also soaks up the fruit juices pretty nicely, kind of like a cobbler.

Braised Plum Granita. Page 198.

2009-06-18T08:41:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a potluck at a friends' house and brought the Curried Chicken Pie from this cookbook. And oh my, was it good. A lot of other people thought so too as it disappeared quite fast. All I can say is it better be good as it took long enough. I'll post about that later though as I don't have the photos with me today.

Rather, we're going to talk about this plum granita I made last week (I know I'm such a tease) and which is still making it's home in the freezer mostly uneaten. I started, as instructed, with fresh and ripe tree plums. These were small Texas plums and while they were tender they also seemed a bit more sour than typical plums.

I forged onwards anyhow and cut them up. I let them saute a bit with sugar then added red wine. I used a Shiraz/Viognier blend as I didn't want a wine that would be too strong.

Once cooked, I pureed the mixture in a blender to achieve a smooth consistency. Curiously the cookbook didn't include this step although the lovely photo of this dessert appears to show a smooth textured granita. Hmm.

Once cooled I froze the berry/wine juice in my ice cream maker to make a sorbet smooth in texture. And other than the several spoonfuls I ate of this whilst cleaning out the ice cream canister I've not had much. Don't get me wrong it's not bad. It has a pleasantly tart/sweet fresh fruit taste. The wine does add a more rounded flavor to it, almost like port and while I don't dislike it, it also doesn't grab me. I think a better choice of wine for this sorbet would have been rose. But I'm not trying this again to find out. The big question now is what to do with the rest of this frozen concoction. Perhaps blend it with some lime juice and tequila for a refreshing summer margarita. I'll keep you posted.

Red Snapper with Green Apple and Mint Chutney. Page 94.

2009-06-16T14:50:00.000-07:00

Today I had lunch with a friend who has an impending stealth birthday. She just wants to keep it on the downlow, which I completely understand. So in lieu of anything big I brought her a little bouquet of herbs from my garden. My little 4 x 30 foot patch is mostly flourishing this year due to my secret fertilizer. Guano (from under the Congress St. bridge). Not so secret now I suppose. In any case we were chatting and she was asking me how the cooking and blog are going and I said that I'm almost done with the seafood recipes. I know I can't believe it either! I'm making white fish in coconut milk tonight for Jeff and I and then I'll only have the monkfish recipe left to do. Today I was describing some of my favorites and this one came up. I really enjoyed this dish and it certainly is very healthy. There's hardly any oil and lots of good-for-you things like omega 3's from the fish and vitamins from the greens and apple and tomato. If you remember I've already made the apple and mint chutney previously, but did a redux for this recipe.

So I made the chutney by processing together (in a food processor of course!) a peeled and cut up granny smith apple, a cut up tomato, 3 cups fresh mint leaves, 2 cups fresh cilantro leaves, 4 serrano peppers and the juice of half a lemon. I love things spicy, but if you're a party pooper I suppose you could leave out the serrano peppers or sub them for jalapenos. And if you don't have a food processor I don't see why you couldn't just cut up all the veggies really fine, like for salsa.

While I was making the chutney I marinated red snapper fillets in some lime juice and fresh thyme leaves, but I don't think this step is absolutely necessary.

Anyways, then I browned the fillets and set them aside to keep warm.

I proceeded to saute some sliced onions, about 1 onion worth then added the mint chutney at the very end and just briefly heated it until slightly cooked.

The snapper was served with chutney as a generous garnish and this was really delicious. Fresh, tart and spicy all at once. I tried to leave the apple a bit chunky so it was nice to get a taste of fresh apple, caramelized onion and fresh herbs all in one bite. A yummy keeper of a meal. Now if only red snapper weren't so expensive. I refuse to buy farmed seafood nowadays. This means I either have to pay more most of the time, wait for sales or substitute one type of fish for another. I'm glad I didn't have to swap anything here as I think the snapper is perfect. I'm thinking that tilapia or catfish would have been too blah for this preparation and that a thicker fish would be just too meaty. Whoever you are out there I encourage you to give this dish a try.

Comfort follow-up.

2009-06-15T08:29:00.001-07:00

I had some nagging thoughts about not being true to the recipe of the Comforting Lemonade I made with rum instead of SoCo and with Jeff saying it would taste better with Southern Comfort I decided to pick up a bottle and try it again. It's certainly not difficult and we've been attending the Solar Powered Concert Series so far this summer and I figured the lemonade would be a good companion for a bit of Fastball.

So I made some, packed it up in a Nalgene bottle and brought along extra ice. And you know what, there is a difference when this is made with the SoCo. It's ever so slightly sweeter and the flavor leans a bit more towards smoky bourbon than crisp rum. Just a little different, but wondeful just the same. Personally I like this made with either rum or SoCo and will probably make a few more batches before the summer is out.

Mexican Cornbread with Jalapeno and Chorizo. Page 186.

2009-06-13T10:17:00.000-07:00

Previously I have found cornbread to be rather difficult. It has a hard time letting go of it's innate desire to be dry. Or perhaps I do not moisten it properly. In any case, I've solved my problem with this type of bread. Although this is a cornbread with a lot of mix-ins it not necessarily need be so. I think the basic proportions here are genius: 1 cup all purpose flour, 1 cup cornmeal, 1 cup milk (I used buttermilk) and 2 eggs. Of course you also have baking powder and soda and sugar and all that but I think the 1.1.1.2. ratio is key to a moist and flavorful cornbread.

Using the proportions in the recipe I mixed the dry and wet ingredients separately. To the wet mixture I added pickled jalapenos, sweet corn and grated jack cheese. Then came the chorizo part. The recipe asked for sliced chorizo sausage and I think what is meant by that is cured Spanish chorizo, not the loose Mexican chorizo we have widely available here and are typically made into stellar breakfast tacos. Since the chorizo is loose it cannot be sliced into pieces, think ground meat. So I did my best here by browning it, draining it and adding to the cornbread batter. I should note here that I also substituted fresh oregano from the garden for the chopped dill requested.

I poured the cornbread batter into a loaf pan and baked at 350.

I suspect that because I used a loaf pan and not a shallower baking dish it took a little longer to bake. This bread was in the oven about 50 minutes and came out super moist and flavorful. We enjoyed it for dinner one evening in front of the TV. Because the chorizo was loose you couldn't taste it so much in the final product, but the flavor of the jalapenos and corn came through quite well. I think next time I'd also like a bit more jack cheese. This is a great potluck dish and I imagine I'll be making this again to bring to parties.

Hot and Sour Tomato Broth with Shrimp. Page 62.

2009-06-12T10:13:00.000-07:00

The other day we were half scared out of our wits. Jeff and I were in the backyard and saw a shadowy figure coming through the house. Of course instead of a scary mugger it was my friend Michael surprising us with a stealth visit. I guess that's what happens when you leave your front door open, any ol' intruder can just walk in! Thank goodness I didn't have a heart attack, there'd be no more posting. Anyways, the reason we were in the backyard was that Jeff was getting ready to grill up some nice jumbo gulf shrimp. They were really very large and I forgot to take a photo. Wah! The grilling was a variation on the recipe as I thought it'd be nice to give it some nice slightly charred grill marks instead of just the broth flavor.

Otherwise I followed the instructions for the broth to the letter and had the soupy mixture going inside in a pot on the stove. I had started by getting ready my ingredients, chopping things and whatnot. That plastic container you see in the back is a tamarind gravy, simply a couple of knobs of tamarind soaked in boiling water and drained.

I sauteed first the garlic, ginger, seeds and curry leaves. The curry leaves were a bit tough to find, but a well timed google search led me to MGM Indian foods. The proprietor there is very nice and it seems a well stocked emporioum although all I purchased that day were the curry leaves.

Then I added green chilies and after a bit the halved cherry tomatoes. These got sauteed along with curry powder until softened.

I then poured in the tamarind gravy and simmered for a while, finishing with some raw cane sugar (jaggery) and fish sauce.

I served this broth with rice noodles and the charred shrimp on top. Chopped cilantro only on mine as Jeff despises it. The broth had a nice sour/sweet flavor but it was sorely lacking in salt. I kept pouring in more fish sauce to my bowl and Jeff added some soy sauce to his. I think this is a great idea for a vegetarian soup base but just needs a bit more tinkering with ingredients to take it out of bland territory.

Peaches in Red Wine. Page 208.

2009-06-11T10:10:00.000-07:00

It's a summer here as I've mentioned before and what's better than a nice cool fruit dessert. This recipe follows the long tradition of fruit soaked in booze. This time it's peaches and the wine is some frou frou varietal known as Recioto, but really this is not far from watermelon and vodka. You know what I'm talking about. Of course I couldn't find Recioto and just used another California red dessert wine. I started with some fresh peaches and cut and peeled them to the best of my ability. Peaches aren't easy to peel!

Here you can see the cut peaches and the brand of wine I used.

After a few hours rest in the fridge these weren't half bad. Well soaked and juicy. Tasty and refreshing. Of course, I can think of plenty of variations, involving apricots or strawberries perhaps. It's a good jumping off point for further booze soaked fruit experimentation.

Chicken for the Bold. Page 111.

2009-06-10T10:06:00.000-07:00

Chef Jeff deserves all the credit for preparing this dish. I came home from work last week in pain and feeling pretty lethargic. I'm not mortally ill, it's just that little thing that happens to most women every month or so and for me it's extremely painful and unpleasant especially if I don't have my ibuprofen on hand and have to go home to get it.

Once home all I could do was sink down on the couch in fetal position. We briefly discussed just getting some quick take out but the chicken drumsticks were already defrosted and Jeff so sweetly offered to cook them. Note that I used drumsticks here instead of wings as called for in the recipe, the organic wings were just way too expensive. I try to buy organic and natural when I can since we're trying to be all healthy and environmentally conscious around here...

Anyhoo, with me peering over the stove Jeff browned the chicken legs quite nicely. He even used a splatter guard something I always forget to do then have to spend hours cleaning the stove muttering angrily to myself.

After the bird legs were nicely browned he poured in some of the chipotle and date chutney. You remember that stuff don't you? It's my crack. I love it over rice and beans, with chips, by the spoonful, you get the idea. My jar of it is running out and I'll have to make some more soon. Very soon. Anyways, after the chutney is poured over and distributed over the chicken Jeff cooked it on the stove a bit further then put into the oven for 7 minutes to finish. It came out perfectly done and lip-smackingly, mouth-burning good. Cooking the chutney really intensified it's heat and completemented the chicken perfectly. Mmm. Smack smack. There are two drumsticks left in the fridge and you can bet they won't stay there for long.

A Comforting Lemonade. Page 238.

2009-06-09T10:09:00.000-07:00

It's summer in Austin which means long, hot, dry days. But there have been some nice breezes this June and it's cherry season, which makes everything so much better. Cherries are some of my favorite fruits and bring back fond childhood memories of summer vacation at my grandmother's house in Kazakhstan picking the firm little red knobs from the large cherry tree in her yard. Chickens running around, dust swirling here and there in the heat, black pavement hot enough to scorch bare feet while on an illicit run for ice cream.

What better way to spend a warm summer evening than with a refreshing libation. I juiced some lemons and a lime, cut up some cherries and made a quick simple syrup.

All the ingredients were mixed in a pitcher with ice and (I'm concerned about admitting this to you all) rum rather than Southern Comfort as the recipe called for. I know I know. I'm just not a huge fan of SoCo. The taste is too whiskey-like for me. Anyways, for this batch I finished the drink with some torn up mint leaves straight from the garden and we enjoyed it over ice while watching some trash TV. Seriously, do you not ever feel superior watching Say Yes to the Dress or Jon and Kate plus 8. And that's not even getting into Housewives of Wherever territory.

While Jeff and I both enjoyed this (it tasted just like you'd imagine a cherry limeade to taste like) I do want to try it with SoCo. Jeff does think it would change the taste noticeably enough. So while I've finished all the drink recipes in the cookbook (Yay!) stay tuned for a repeat of this lemonade and the white sangria. Summer is very long in Austin after all and we need all the cool refreshing beverages we can get our hands on.

Braised Beef or Lamb with Tomato and Cumin. Page 144.

2009-06-08T12:46:00.000-07:00

There's been some buzz in food circles and now in Time magazine (which means this particular trend has probably jumped the shark) about people going in and buying a whole animal such as a pig or cow, having it processed and splitting the meat. It sounds like a great idea actually, but we already have a half freezer full of various venison parts. I did this last year too, obtained a couple quarters of deer from work (long story, the company owns a ranch) and had it processed myself into sausage and such. The best part is the backstrap, which I've made a couple times now using a recipe from the Hudson on the Bend cookbook. Jeff and I ate the tenderloin dish at the restaurant itself once and I think I did a pretty decent of recreating it at home, although it is a pretty long process especially making the beaurre blanc, in the French style of course.

With so much meat in the freezer, naturally I'm trying to find ways to use it all. And it's great really, because it's so healthy and lean and grassfed in the most natural way. In addition to lasagna and shepherd's pie I've made sultan's delight using venison stew chunks. Given that for this recipe Padma allows the use of either beef or lamb, I felt pretty good about subbing venison. And it worked out great.

I cut my defrosted ham steaks of venison into chunks. Do you see the marrow still in the bone of this cut? It turned out to be silky and delicious once the dish was done.

I sauteed some spices, onions, garlic and dried peppers in a dutch oven then added the meat chunks and fresh bay leaf.

I did my best to brown the chunks, but I'm afraid there was already too much moisture in the pot from the onions to really get a good sear. Oh well. I added tomatoes and poured in some water, then set the whole thing to simmer for a few hours. The thing with venison is that it really takes a good while to become tender. There is so little fat, that you really need that low, slow heat to break down the tough muscle. So while the beef or lamb would have been done in an hour and a half or two, this meat took a good 4 hours to cook.

But no worries, it was worth all the time it took. I left it overnight in the fridge for all the flavors to meld and it really tasted great the next day and over the following several days as we enjoyed some for dinner and ate leftovers for lunch. It had a nice beef stew kind of flavor with tomatoey broth lightly touched by the Indian spices of garam masala. Very enjoyable over basmati rice and quite healthy too. My only complaint is that it really needed more salt, but that's easily remedied at the dining table.

Sea Scallops with Crushed Peanuts and Cucumber Relish. Page 84.

2009-06-06T14:54:00.000-07:00

Ah, the piece de resistance of Jeff's birthday meal. Jeff loves sea scallops. It's a sure bet that if there are scallops on a restaurant menu that he'll order them. So for his birthday I thought it would be fitting to make these seafood treats for him.

I began by making a cucumber, tomato, dill and crushed peanut relish.

I set this aside then washed and dried the scallops.

I dipped each one into a light mixture of flour and breadcrumbs and fried in batches for about 2 minutes each side. Scallops are all too easy to overcook so I kept my eye on them like a hawk and actually took them off the heat when they still felt a bit wobbly. They finished cooking on the plate nicely.

Here they are in their nicely browned glory surrounded by the fresh tang of the cucumber relish.

In all fairness I don't think either I or Padma can take much credit for the awesomeness of scallops. Really they are one of nature's perfect foods. Tender, velvety and buttery. Short of overseasoning or overcooking them it's hard to screw up scallops. Starting with the freshest you can find always helps too. In this department I feel like I've never really been disappointed by the quality at the Central Market seafood department. Sure you'll pay plenty, but sometimes they have sales on certain items and the freshness is top-notch.

Another year gone for my Jeffie. We had a really wonderful meal and it's just the beginning of many more to come this year.

Homemade Hot Chocolate. Page 234.

2009-06-06T10:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was just one of those days that made getting up in the morning very difficult. I don't know why but there was just this lethargy about getting out of bed and going to work. Nothing makes those mornings better than a little special treat. In this case, even though we're in the middle of summer, I whipped up a quick batch of homemade hot chocolate. Basically it is chocolate and cocoa powder melted in some warm milk. I added a splash of vanilla and a sprinkling of cinnamon. I sipped a bit of the hot cocoa by itself, but most of got mixed in with coffee for a spur of the moment mocha.

Mission accomplished. We got through the day and made it through yet another recipe. In other news, I'm almost done with the drinks section of the cookbook. I'll you about the comforting lemonade soon and that's that! All the beverages will have been made.

Sauteed Calamari with Checca. Page 100.

2009-06-05T14:41:00.000-07:00

I made a fairly big meal for Jeff's birthday this year. In addition to the chocolate cake (which we still have some slices of stashed in the freezer!) I made a fig and cheese starter, this calamari dish and some yummy scallops which are coming up soon!

I confess that I really like calamari, but I like mine very lightly battered. I hate that overly breaded texture of calamari in lesser quality (or cheaper) establishments. This called for a light breadcrumb coating which sounded very promising. So I started with some squid that I had cut up at the seafood counter. This was my first time making calamari at home, otherwise I would have asked the seafood chap to slice them thinner. The thick slices really proved to be a problem as the calamari never got tender. It was rather chewy even though I was very careful about setting the timer for just a few minutes and of the 3 batches I made none got flash fried for more than 4 minutes. I varied the cooking times at 2, 3 and 4 minutes and they all turned out the same somewhat rubbery texture. Just too thick, unfortunately.

But anyways, here they are resting in their soaking liquid, I used buttermilk as I had some left over from making the b-day cake.

After soaking in this mixture, the calamari rings were drained, breaded and flash fried. As soon as I took them off the heat I tossed in a mixture of diced tomatoes, jalapenos and basil. This was the checca and for Jeff and I this was probably the favorite part of the dish. The tomato/basil mixture was really good, even for the tomato-phobic birthday boy! I apologize the picture is so bad! It was oily messy craziness in the kitchen between the speedy frying and the topping of dishes with relishes. In summary I'd like to try this dish again with thinner slices, but may or may not. Calamari is fairly easy to get at restaurants and who can resist those 1/2 price happy hour appetizer specials?? Not I.

Baked Figs with Manchego. Page 203.

2009-06-05T12:37:00.000-07:00

This recipe comes from the dessert section of the cookbook, but I made it as a starter for Jeff's birthday dinner. I was inspired by some lovely looking fresh figs I saw at Central Market on a weekly shopping trip and really why resist, fresh figs are around so infrequently. So Jeff got to try his first fresh fig (Happy birthday JT!) and I baked the rest up with some cheese.

I brushed each halved fig with a light coating of balsamic vinegar then topped with shredded Manchego and a bit of ground black pepper.

Per instructions I baked them in a 350 degree oven, but that didn't quite give me the blistered cheese look I was going for so I broiled under the broiler for a few minutes and voila!

Juicy succulent figs topped with a crunchy melted cheese exterior. They were melt in your mouth tender and paired beautifully with some white wine. I would definitely like to make this again; I think next time I'll just broil for a couple of minutes to melt the cheese and preserve the fig freshness. The only sad part is that figs seem to have a pretty short season and aren't too cheap. Oh well, next time I have a spare Hamilton I'll pick up a few of these babies.

Chilled Papaya Mousse with Countreau. Page 210.

2009-06-02T16:53:00.000-07:00

I really love papaya. When we go and stay in tropical places and especially at those generous all inclusive resorts (I'm looking at you Riu) that feature fresh fruit spreads, I eat my weight in papaya chunks and smoothies. Mmmm... I always mean to continue eating papaya when I get home, but rarely do either because of cost or season, which is really the same thing. So, when I saw this recipe I was excited to try it. A lot of fruit mousses are good, aren't they? And this fresh papaya looks fresh and dewy doesn't it? All I can say is I should have eaten it like this.

Moving on. I blended papaya chunks in a blender with some crumbled jaggery (raw cane sugar). Then I heated up this mixture and gradually added cream over low heat.

Once thickened I added orange liquer, not the Countreau brand, but another quality product, and poured into ramekins and set in the fridge to set.

The only positive here is that this set very well. Unlike the Tuscan lemon pudding this actually came out as a pudding texture. Not mousse mind you, but pudding. Re-reading the recipe instructions I think that a crucial step was omitted, one that I'm used to seeing in mousse recipes, and that is to whip the cream. It's whipping the heavy cream into light fluffy peaks that results in a well... light and fluffy mousse. This was heavy and it tasted bad. Other than a very strange bitter flavor (the orange liquer perhaps?) this tasted overripe and just horrid. It was like eating ready to spoil papaya flesh with cream. Not cool. I choked down a few bites. Jeff tried as well. But in the end this was destined for the trash heap. What a shame. Maybe there's a reason that a quick search of google does not result in very many papaya mousse recipes at all.

Fennel and Herb Salad with Labneh Cheese. Page 54.

2009-06-01T14:58:00.000-07:00

I made this salad for myself on one of those nights when Jeff had an HOA meeting and was quite pleased with it. I suppose I should start by telling you how I made it, from the very beginning. This salad is very simple to prepare but requires a rather unusual cheese. The recipe specifically called for Labneh goat cheese in oil and herbs, but this was nowhere to be found. I contented myself with Labneh cheese in a plastic container, rather like yogurt. And in fact this is a yogurt cheese. It has a pleasantly tangy taste and very creamy texture.

Once I had the cheese in hand I decided to make my own herb and olive oil mixture to flavor it. This was easier said than done as the cheese was pretty sticky and I made a big mess rolling it into sloppy balls. Oh well. I refridgerated this mixture for a week or so to blend the flavors.

On the day I was ready to eat, I thinly sliced a bulb of fennel using that 'ol reliable, the food processor. Doesn't the fennel vegetation look like hair?

I mixed the sliced fennel with some fresh chopped herbs.

And topped with balls of Labneh cheese.

This was a nice enjoyable salad. Once I mixed it all together it tasted like a light coleslaw in a way, and got me thinking about variations. Maybe throw in some purple cabbage plus toasted sliced almonds for a nutty crunch. Either way I'm happy to have discovered Labneh cheese!

Jamaican Johnny Cake. Page 213.

2009-05-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

Today I thought we might talk about baking. Other than from my Mother, who has a rather haphazard approach to ingredient measures, I learned how to bake from a vintage 1950's Betty Crocker cookbook. As a teenager I was making chocolate cake with frosting and walnuts on top and had visions of lemon chiffon cakes dancing in my head. When I lived in Alaska I made muffins, cakes and pies from the bounty of berries in the summer and even tried my hand at homemade burger buns. Nowadays, with pretty long work hours I don't have all that much time for butter slinging as it were. And I'm really not a huge baked goods person. I like to bake them and I'll have one or 2 and then I'm done. It doesn't help matters that most baked goods aren't very healthy and often too sweet.

But this loaf bread does have potential. It had a nice not too sweet banana/molasses flavor and was extremely moist. Have you ever had the pumpkin bread at Starbucks? Well, that's what this bread reminds me of. Not that it tastes like pumpkin, but the texture and heartiness is there. Much healthier though. Just for fun I entered all the ingredients into one of those online calorie calculators and came up with 217 calories per slice, assuming 12 slices from one loaf. Not bad if one were to have a slice for breakfast say.

And while this bread was certainly nice I can't help thinking of variations. Perhaps replacing the molasses with maple syrup, adding some crunch with walnuts and maybe throwing some figs in there. You might have guessed already that I'm trying to get rid of some pantry ingredients.

Anyways, I started by blending together ripe banana, molasses, butter, pretty much all the wet ingredients. I wanted a smooth texture in the bread so I used the food processor.

I quickly tossed together the dry ingredients which was interestingly a mix of all purpose flour and cornmeal. I wonder about subbing whole wheat flour next time. Hmmm the possibilities.

Once all the ingredients got mixed into a batter I poured into a loaf pan and baked at 350. If I have any complaints about the recipe it's this: Padma claims that this bread will be ready in about 30 minutes, it really took closer to an hour. A quick glance to Joy of Cooking reveals that banana type bread really needs to bake 55-65 minutes. This is just another example of overly ambitious cooking estimates in this book.

However once done the bread smelled heavenly. I wasn't so good at waiting for it to cool so I cut into it while hot and it was a bit mushy. But it firmed up nicely once cooled and made for a portable breakfast/snack food. Jeff especially would take some with him while driving around all day seeing patients.

You can see in the cross section here how moist and tender it is.

In summation I'm not quite sure what a Jamaican johnny cake is. Maybe I'll find out when I actually visit Jamaica. In the meantime I'm happy to have this recipe and I'll try to post a variation once I work out the proportions and what I want to include in the mix.

To finish this round of baking mania I'll leave you with the image of a cake I made for Jeff's birthday this week. I used an epicurious recipe and halved the ingredients for the batter and the ganache frosting. It made plenty to half fill 2 ten inch round pans. I baked those at 300 then froze the rounds wrapped in plenty of plastic until the next day, and frosted while the layers were still frozen. In between the chocolate layers I spread a raspberry puree and it spread nicely into the cakes themselves infusing them with a lovely fresh raspberry flavor. The combination of raspberry and rich, rich dark chocolate made for an awesome cake. This is definitely a dessert for the true chocoholic. Very dark and almost dense but without being dry. I think this is my go-to choco cake recipe from now on, for layered cakes that is. For bundt cakes I have a favorite chocolate orange recipe. Till next time!

Pan Charred Peas. Page 194.

2009-05-25T11:32:00.000-07:00

Padma writes that this was the first dish she learned to cook, when she was 7. I can relate to cooking at a young age. Since I was (and still am) the oldest in my family, I started putting meals together quite early on to feed the younger kiddos. This certainly looks like something I could have mastered and it was in fact very easy to make. So it's perfect for the young child or the grownup who never learned how to cook.

To get started kids, all you do is heat up some defrosted frozen peas in a skillet. Saute a bit then add some garam masala and salt.

Saute a bit more then add anar dana (ground pomegranate seeds) and a bit of chili powder. Finish off with a squeeze of lemon then saute further until charred.

This makes an easy side dish and I bet it would go great with rice although we just ate it on it's own and I took a bit of the leftovers to work the next day for lunch. The flavor was a nice mix of the slight char of the peas complemented by the quintessential Indian flavors of masala and chili. Not bad at all.

Tuscan Lemon Pudding. Page 217.

2009-05-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

Since we've gotten back from NY I've had a busy week. Between unpacking, laundry, groceries and a work event today I've not had much time to blog. So to get back into the swing of things I thought I'd talk today about this lemon pudding which I made some time ago for the girls night I hosted. You know how some foods have a very specific memory point? Well this is one of them. When I made this cream, and that's really what it is, it took me back to all those wonderful filled pastries I ate in Italy, especially in the southern region. Pillowy pastries filled with a light, not too sweet cream and dusted with powdered sugar. Wonderful for breakfast or an afternoon snack and so much more subtle than most American sweets. I remember them well and this so called pudding is very reminiscent of those cream fillings. I suppose you're beginning to see that I wasn't so impressed with this recipe, and indeed on it's own it was very underwhelming. It never achieved the thick consistency of a true pudding and was rather difficult to put together. In fact the first batch curdled on me. So here we go into the heart of pudding darkness.

I started by whipping together a bunch of eggs. This was a bit of an adventure in itself as by the time I got to the farmer's market that week all the large eggs had been sold out and I had to contend myself with a dozen small ones. A quick reference to Joy of Cooking told me I could substitute 7 small ones for the 5 large ones the recipe called for.

Once I got the egg situation under control I put a quart of milk and some lemon zest to heat in the double boiler. The double boiler is my go-to method for making eggy creams and bases, but in this case the heat must have been too high because when I gently beat in the blended egg mixture the whole thing curdled in a few minutes.

Thank heavens I had plenty more eggs and milk and not one to give up yet I tried again and this time successfully incorporated the eggs into the milk mixture over very low heat and cooked stirring constantly for about 15 minutes.

Whew! Here's the detritus of my cooking experimentation. Way too many eggs used up.

Once I got this creation to the right consistency I poured it into a corningware container over an ice bath. Then in the fridge to set.

It did gel a bit in the fridge, but not to the consistency of a traditional pudding. This would probably have been great to pipe into a pastry or popover, but I'm not going to make it again to find out.
So as I mentioned the girls and I dunked a few strawberries into this sauce but I could tell their reaction was lukewarm as was mine. Out of a desire to not waste food I did freeze the rest of it in the ice cream maker and that tasted okay too. All in all nothing to write home about and it certainly won't make it on the menu of Katrina's future dream coffeeshop. Quite likely the best thing about this recipe is that the ingredients are only 3 in number.

Green Dragon Curry with Shrimp. Page 104.

2009-05-20T11:50:00.000-07:00

Ah curry how I love thee so! Red, green, yellow and usually as spicy as possible. Even though I made this recipe a while back it seems fitting to write about it now as we just got back from NY where we enjoyed the most amazing curries made by our friend Danielle who is from Trinidad. As wonderful as that was (and it really was!) I'm particulary fond of thai curries. In recent years a good green curry has become my favorite. Sure I've made them in my kitchen before using green curry paste purchased from Asian markets but I had never achieved the nirvana of really good green curry. With this recipe I am in that place of enlightenment. I've discovered the secret ingredient and that is kaffir lime leaf. It is the fragrant scent of that exotic leaf that fills every Thai restaurant you go into. Once I smelled it I realized this is it! Once I did find it that is, it took several market visits to find a little thai store here in town that carries it. Now I have a pretty good stash of it in the freezer.

To make this curry you have to assemble a good amount of various ingredients. This isn't a difficult recipe by any means, but it requires all the ingredients to be ready to go as the dish comes together in a flash.

First, mint, cilantro and thai basil get pulsed in a food processor like so.

Having set aside the herb mixture, a combination of shallots, garlic, serrano chilies, lemongrass, ginger, lemon juice and coconut milk gets pureed.

To begin the cooking in earnest I brought out my trusty dutch oven and sauteed the green beans in sesame oil.

After a bit I added the coconut milk mixture, fish sauce, kaffir lime leaves, amchoor powder (dried mango powder) and a bit of madras curry powder. After letting this meld a bit over the heat I added bamboo shoots and fish stock.

After a few more minutes of simmering I added the green herb mix, jaggery (a raw piece of sugar cane), madras curry powder and salt. At the very end I put in the shrimp and allowed to cook for a just a few minutes more.

And all I can say is Wow. This is by far the best curry I have ever made and very near the top of all the thai curries I've eaten. I feel like I've cracked the code, been admitted to a secret food society. I'm excited that I can now make this anytime and perhaps try it with other meats like chicken or even scallops, although the shrimp are a perfect vehicle for this gorgeous sauce. There are a lot of ingredients, but apart from the green things mostly everything can be kept in the pantry or freezer and this recipe makes a lot. Jeff and I enjoyed this for dinner plus a couple of lunches. Perfect with jasmine rice anytime of day.

Lychee Granita. Page 220.

2009-05-18T11:58:00.000-07:00

I'm making good headway through the desserts and drinks chapters in Tangy Tart Hot and Sweet, not necessarily because I like sweets, but because a number of the recipes are fairly easy to prepare and therefore I have no reason not to get them done. I made this lychee granita using canned lychees, water, sugar and cardamom. That's it!

So here we go, I ground up some fresh cardamom, 1.5 tsp of it to be exact.

I stirred in sugar into a pot of hot water, boiled a bit, added the cardamom and lychees, simmered and pureed with an immersion blender.

Once the mixture cooled I froze it in my trusty ice cream maker.

The end result is a sweet lychee sorbet that is very cardamomy. I like cardamom, but this was on the verge of overpowering the delicate lychee flavor. I really think the ground cardamom should be dialed down to 1 tsp. I ate a bit of it like this, in a saucer.

But most of it I brought to my friend Michael's house last week and we make lychee vodka martinis. A pretty good use of this granita and more importantly the vodka. Na'zdorovya tovarisch!

Keralan Crab Cakes. Page 3.

2009-05-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

Mmm crabcakes. I looove crabcakes. I was planning to make this recipe at some point (of course, it's in the book!) but I wanted to make sure and use fresh crab meat, not canned. I'd scan the seafood sections of the stores I go to and recently saw that Central Market, that old standby, was flying in fresh blue crabs 3 times a week. Score! I picked up a pound of already shelled crab meat and mixed the flaky white flesh with shredded coconut, bread crumbs, flour, shredded carrot, finely chopped celery, minced serrano peppers, sweet corn kernels, chives and a bit of ground amchoor. I added some whole milk to glue the whole thing together and then shaped the mixture into 3" wide cakes and cooled until ready to fry. Since I was elbow deep in this tasty mess there aren't too many photos.

It was then a very simple affair to fry the crabcakes in a bit of oil until nicely browned. These were very tasty. The coconut and serrano peppers were the flavors of interest here, one provided a nice light sweetness, the other gave a bit of lingering heat. These were definitely unique crabcakes reminiscent of the tropics. There was no mayo and not much breadcrumbs in the mix so they weren't creamy, but rather quite flaky. So flaky in fact that of the 8 cakes I fried, 2 fell apart. But no matter, if you like I, are not too fond of those over-breaded cakes often served in restaurants to stretch the white gold to a maximum level, you'll enjoy these ultra fresh tasting creations. They actually taste like crab. Imagine that.

To accompany the cakes I made a quick version of a mint apple chutney. If you recall I made the green apple mint chutney recipe a while back. This was a variation on the theme as I only had a granny smith apple in the fridge and some mint and cilantro in the garden. Here's what I did, I peeled and cored one granny smith apple, cut it up into a few chunks and pulsed in the food processor with a handful of fresh mint leaves and half a handful of fresh cilantro leaves. I scooped into a bowl and squeezed half a lemon over the chutney and mixed. It made a fresh and fruity companion for the slight richness of the crabcakes.

Raspberry Champagne Spritzer. Page 234.

2009-05-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

Last week I had a few of the girls over to watch the Sex and the City movie. Again for most of us. In honor of those eternally entertaining foursome, I made these foofy girly cocktails. I'm not a fan of sweet drinks. Besides red and white wines I typically like to order a gin and tonic. Occasionally I'll have a margarita or mexican martini with Tex Mex food which is omnipresent here in Austin. But again I don't like them too sweet and a definite no on any daquiris, pina coladas, or syrupy concoctions. Blech. So for this recipe I was a bit hesitant about the spritzers coming out too sweet. But no such worries, these were tasty and refreshing.

I started with a bottle of the finest bubbly. At $9.99 a bottle this baby had the right price if not quite the class.

To each glass I added a dollop of raspberry sorbet, some strawberries and torn mint leaves. Once you doctor up the drink like that it doesn't really matter what kind of sparkling wine you use. Just don't buy Cook's, but otherwise most inexpensive bottles will work great.

Over the sorbet and fruit I poured in the faux champagne and there you have it, spritzers. Fruity, sparkling and ever so slightly sweet. Perfect for your next girls night.

Yipee! We are leaving for NYC tomorrow. I'm so excited. It's a little teeny mini vacation. I'm sure it'll be full of good food, drinks and friends. To keep you excited and happy I've hidden a couple of easter eggs, as the kids say, litle surprise posts that'll pop up. Otherwise have a sparkling day and I'll see you next week.

Creamy Broccoli Soup. Page 72.

2009-05-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

I was driving to work and thinking about this soup. I made it a couple of weeks ago, but it's still on my mind. You see this morning a certain skirt I like to wear was feeling a little tight. That's a warning sign not to be ignored. Left to my own devices I usually eat pretty healthy. For the longest time my lunch at work consisted of baby salad greens, with an avocado sliced up and thrown in, topped with some dried cranberries or sliced almonds or pepitas, drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette. Sometimes I'd microwave a veggie burger and throw that in, occassionally there would be crumbled feta too. Healthy and filling. At times I'd even have something similar for dinner. That was my routine and it worked. I'd go through phases where I'd get tired of the salads and turn to Amy's frozen meals for a while. Still natural and fairly healthy. This project puts me squarely out of my comfort zone a good portion of the time. It involves unusual and exotic flavors sometimes with great success, other times not so much. Most of the recipes also call for more fat than I typically use. This is a prime example. I made this soup for dinner on the same day as the fiddlehead ferns and there was some left over so I brought it to work. I hate to waste food so nowadays I have leftovers of my kitchen experiements for lunch the next day, on most days.

I have a couple of complaints about this recipe and have concocted in my mind a new broccoli soup, based on this recipe, but entirely different. First, let me tell you how I made this soup, to the letter.

I started by cutting up shallots, garlic and broccoli.

I sauteed the said shallots and garlic in butter and added herbs de Provence and pine nuts. The amount of pine nuts called for in this recipe was a red flag. The directions ask for 1/2 tbsp. That tiny amount of nuts is not enough to provide any discernible pine-nutty flavor. Not when they're competing with a pound of broccoli and a full cup of half and half. In fact, it's a waste of this expensive delicacy. I doubled the amount to 1 tbsp. but even then, they never stood a chance.

Moving on. I added broccoli florets, stir fried a bit, poured in homemade chicken stock and simmered until the broccoli was tender.

I pureed the soup with an immersion blender then stirred in a cup of half and half and heated through.

To say that I enjoyed this soup would be a kind exaggeration, and I'm not really feeling that generous today. It looked pretty. It was edible. It fasted like a fairly typical cream of brocolli soup, albeit more creamy than I'm used to. I ate all of it, but I resent the calories. I could've had some Ben and Jerry's chubby hubby ice cream instead, damn it. Here are my issues with it:

1. The proportion of broccoli to cream was not adequate. While I appreciate that Padma gives the option of using half and half in lieu of cream to cut calories, there should have been more broccoli. I bought a full 1.5 lbs of broccoli with the expectation that by the time I trimmed off the tough stems I'd have a pound. It was not enough.

2. The pine nuts. The head notes for this recipe state that it's the creamiest soup in the book because of the pine nuts. With only 1/2 tbsp of pine nuts called for, it's not the nuts that make this rich, it's the butter and half and half. By my estimation at least a 1/4 cup of pine nuts would be needed to flavor the soup.

3. The herbs de Provence. In the final product I did not taste any of this fragrant mix of flavorings. Therefore 1 tsp. is not sufficient.

Here's how I would make this soup next time. If I attempt it again, that is.

Ingredients:

1 tbsp. olive oil

1 cup chopped shallots

4 cloves garlic, shopped

1/4 cup pine nuts

1 tbsp. herbs de Provence

1 lb. trimmed broccoli florets

2 cups homemade chicken stock

1/2 cup half and half

salt and ground pepper to taste.

Instructions:

Heat oil in a deep pot add shallots and garlic and saute until tender. Add the pine nuts and stir briefly until lightly toasted. Add the broccoli and stir fry a couple of minutes until it starts to wilt and browns slightly at the edges. And the full tbsp. of herbs de Provence and stir to coat the broccoli well. Add the chicken stock and simmer until broccoli is tender. Puree soup and stir in the half and half. Heat briefly, but don't let it boil. Serve with salt and pepper. And invite me over if you make it.