Variation on a Salsa Verde

For some time now, I've been craving salsa verde. I don't really know why, or even what I wanted to do when I find it, but there was a clear deficit of the stuff in my life. Store-bought salsas are pretty much invariably disappointing, and the green varieties double so. They usually at double the cost too.

Traditionally, salsa verde is made with jalapenos, tomatillos, cilantro, and lime juice. I don't like jalapenos (or, at least, I prefer other sources of heat), the cilantro at the store wasn't so great, and I forgot to buy lime juice. As usual, I was not about to let this deter me.

I used:

• 3 tomatillos
• 1 cup (or so) fresh basil
• 3/4 cup Vidalia onion
• 2 Serrano peppers
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tbs olive oil
• 3/4 tsp celery salt
• 3/4 tsp turbinado sugar

First, preheat your broiler, with the top rack as far up as it goes. Now remove the papery husks from the tomatillos, and wash the sticky stuff from them. Now, slice them in half, and place on a cookie sheet with your peppers and unpeeled garlic. Put in the broiler, about 1-2 inches from heat. They should stay in until the tomatillos are slightly charred and falling apart, which takes about 10 minutes, but you should turn everything once halfway through.

While those are cooking, chop up your onion and measure the spices.

Once everything's cooked, take it out of the oven, peel the garlic and stem the peppers. Now, put everything into a blender or food processor and liquify. Adjust with salt, sugar, pepper, and whatever else you like, until you're happy. Remember - the flavors will be stronger once it has cooled and congealed a bit!

Serve with chips or on enchiladas or wherever you might want a very flavorful, slightly sweet but mostly tangy, heat. It also works very well as a pesto substitute if you use more basil.

Posted by maw at 9:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Vegan Veggies

Occasional Füddie SNH sends us this quick, vegan & gluten-free dish using lemon zest and tahini to make a delicious, creamy and tangy sauce.

Ingredients:
3 lemons
1 crown of broccoli
1/2 crown cauliflower
1 cup okra, chopped
Thin rice noodles (or other noodles)
1 Tbsp tahini (sesame paste)
2 cloves garlic
Almonds, roasted and chopped
Olive oil
Black pepper (fresh ground)

- Chop broccoli, cauliflower, and okra. Cut large florets in half, keep small florets. Set aside.
- Zest one of the lemons and set the zest aside.
- Juice all three lemons.
- In a small saucepan (cast iron works well*), heat 1 tbsp olive oil on low.
- In a steamer, steam the broccoli, cauliflower, and okra.
- Chop or crush garlic, combine with olive oil in saucepan. Increase heat to medium-low, sautee 5 minutes.
- Add lemon zest and sautée for another 5 minutes.
- Optional: Remove lemon zest and garlic cloves from the olive oil.
- Add lemon juice and tahini to olive oil, stirring until the mixture has a creamy consistency. Reduce heat to low and stir every few minutes until ready to serve.
- Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the rice noodles. Cook according to directions on the package.

Once vegetables have reached desired tenderness, drain the noodles and vegetables. Serve noodles topped with vegetables, sauce, and almonds.

*If using cast iron for the sauce, be sure to rinse promptly after and re-season with oil right away. The highly acidic lemon juice can strip the pan of some of its seasoning/coating.

Diagrammatic Chicken

Recipes are a funny thing. Some people live by them - they read and follow every instruction to the letter, obsessing over how many salt grains are in a “pinch” (is that the same as a “Pinch”?) or if a splash is more than one shake of the soy sauce bottle. Then there are people like my great-grandmother, who are probably aware that “teaspoon” has a specific definition, but wouldn’t admit it if asked.

I’m somewhere in between: I like recipes in theory, but am a bit inconsistent at actually using them once in the kitchen. It’s always nice to have some idea what you’re going to need from the store, and how long it’s likely to take, but once the cooking starts, I tend to let go of what’s written down in favor of what flavors or textures or colors strike me just then. Sometimes it works, sometimes it’s a disaster. Other people generally don’t hear about the latter, and that is not about to change.

But this is all subject to a bias, generated by how recipes have always been presented to me: a list of ingredients and instructions, neatly indented and punctuated, with notes in the margins and certain words circled or crossed out and written over. Upon seeing the image above on BoingBoing last week, I couldn’t resist.

First of all, it’s beautiful. Second of all (assuming there’s not much missing from the translations), it does just what I want a recipe to do: it gives me an idea, easily subjected to my own moods and whims. In deference to that concept, I’ll only give the highlights of my version.

I used all the ingredients in the diagram (except duck, I only had chicken), plus some tapioca starch. For the “1 cup sauce” I used about 3/4 cup soy sauce, and the rest was mostly Sriracha and some lime juice.

I fried the spices in sesame oil till they were fragrant, then added the chicken and, after a couple of minutes, my shitakes. After a while I added the sauce and beer (I used Kirin Ichiban, because it’s what I had), and when the chicken was cooked I thickened it with the starch.

I served it over white hominy, because I was too lazy to make rice, and that actually worked really well. It was a bit salty (maybe less soy sauce and more beer next time), but really delicious.

Any brilliant artists out there who want to make me very happy are encouraged to paint some recipes after this fashion - my kitchen has plenty of empty wall space!

Quick Lemongrass Chicken

Lemongrass is a great spice. It can be used in warm, soothing dishes as well as it can be in cold refreshing and hot jarring ones. I love to use it as a way of brightening up a recipe, much as I'd use lemon juice, although without the acidity or extra liquid. This dish is one I've been making, in one form or another, for many years - it's fast, easy, and pretty healthy.

Because this is a dish that's best made a bit thrown-together, everything here is approximate, and everyone should adjust to their own tastes and moods.

What you need:

1 3/4 chicken breast, cut into strips
1 tbs. garlic (minced)
1 tbs lemongrass, diced small
1 tbs light soy sauce
1 tbs oyster sauce
1 tbs rice wine (or cheap red, if that's what you've got)
2 serrano peppers, diced
Fresh basil

What you do:

Heat some oil to medium-high in a wok, and add the garlic and lemongrass, stirring until very fragrant. Then, add the chicken and let cook until it's about 3/4 done, about 3 minutes. Now, raise the heat to high and add your sauces and peppers, stir-frying for about a minute. Lower heat back to medium, and cook until the sauce is reduced about 80%.

Serve hot over rice, and garnish with basil leaves.

(Image from wiki-images)

Kung-Pao Style Chicken for One

The one downside to living alone is that cooking for one can be a real challenge. Most recipes serve more than one, and ingredients don’t always come in easily-subdivided groupings. Here’s a recipe I quite like that makes one serving, for which I use chicken breasts which I keep in single freezer bags.

It’s based off of what a friend of mine does for her family, but scaled down and modified to suit my tastes.

This is what you need:

1 chicken breast cut in 1-inch bits
2 baby bok choys, chopped up
1/3 of a yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger
2 Serrano peppers, diced
A handful of roasted peanuts
Another handful of peanuts, ground up
2 tbs rice wine (or marsala)
1.5 tbs soy sauce
1 tsp tapioca starch (or corn if you prefer)
Mirin
Sugar
Sesame oil.

Cut everything up, and make your sauce: mix the wine, soy sauce, half the peppers and garlic, and a splash of mirin in a glass, and set it aside.

Now, get your wok going over medium-high heat, and add a couple tablespoons of oil. Add the ginger and the peppers and garlic not in your sauce, and stir for 30 seconds. Add the chicken, stir around, and let cook for a couple of minutes, until it’s about half done. Now add your onions, and when they begin to get translucent, your bok choy and whole peanuts.

Dump in your sauce, adding a bit more oil if you need it. Add the ground nuts and toss that all together, and let cook about a minute. Meanwhile, dissolve your starch in warm water. Now reduce the heat to medium and stir in the starch-water slurry. This will thicken the sauce. Adjust your seasonings to taste (I usually add a bit of Sriracha, because I love it), and serve hot over rice.

Eastern Ingenuity Meets Western Laziness

I bought one of those pre-prepped bags of broccoli and cauliflower and carrots at the grocery store the other day, because it was on sale and because I love veggies and because I am lazy. At home, I noticed that on the back of the bag there was a recipe for a vegetable curry, using the contents of the bag, and other similarly-branded ingredients. I didn’t have most of those other things handy, and also the recipe didn’t look very good. But the idea's seeds were sewn.

Days later, at the Asian market, I came upon the aisle of canned curry mixes and powders. When an older lady speaking what sounded like Thai to her cell phone grabbed about four cans of Bright brand (Thai) Green Curry, I decided to try it. I’ve been steered horribly wrong before, but more often than not this is a good way of picking between brands you don’t know. I also picked up a few other ingredients and, for reasons not entirely clear even to me, later (at the farmers market) decided to buy buffalo instead of beef or chicken meat.

I ended up with the following:

- 2 cans green curry ( FYI: it has coconut milk and bamboo shoots and kefir leaves already in it, if you’re making your own)
- 1 large fresh Serrano pepper (about 1.5 tbs chopped)
- 1 stalk fresh lemongrass
- 1 lb. of mixed broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots
- 1 medium yellow onion
- 1.5 pounds buffalo top round
- Fish sauce
- Dry roasted peanuts

Back home, I got to work: I diced the onion and Serrano, chopped about 2 tbs of the lemongrass (slice into thin circles, then quarter), rinsed the veggies, trimmed the meat, and cut it into 3/4 - inch cubes. I got out my biggest pot, and first browned the meat a little bit. Then, I lowered the heat to medium and added olive oil, followed by about half of the chilies and lemongrass. After this was all nice and warm and fragrant, I stirred in the onions. I let them cook about 5 minutes, till a bit translucent but not all the way.

At that point, I added the veggies, and both cans of curry, about 3 tbs of fish sauce, and the remaining spices. I also added sriracha, but then again I like things hot. I upped the temperature as well, to medium-high, and let the curry simmer and reduce, stirring only once in a while, until everything was the right texture. It was, at this point, still a little watery for me, so I mixed a big teaspoon of tapioca starch in a quarter-cup of water, and stirred that into the curry to thicken it.

I am, it should be known, a bit lax in my advanced planning and very prone to forgetting to do things. Like, say, to buy rice at the store. Or to think about boiling pasta before the rest of my meal is nearly ready. Luckily, I am aware of my own, err, idiosyncrasies, and stock my shelves accordingly. It turns out that canned white hominy is easy and fast to warm, and actually makes a nice substitute for rice.

I garnished the dish with the peanuts, which I ground with mortar and pestle, which I think was a key factor in making this dish delicious. Without it, the buffalo was too much of a random flavor - the peanuts helped to integrate it all together. Plus, I love peanuts.

Breadfruit Sautée

A funny thing about my West-Indian tinged upbringing is that I’ve been exposed to so many amazing foods and cuisines, but not often directly enough to learn to execute them properly. So many of the dishes I grew up loving and still think of as supreme comfort food, I have no idea how to deal with preparing. Breadfruit is a prime example: the sweet, starchy fruit’s luscious perfume transports me instantly to warmer climes and friendlier faces, but once home with one, I’ve always been a bit perplexed. A wonderful substitute for potatoes or yams, the stuff is a royal pain to cook.

Despite this knowledge, the gorgeous aroma as I walked by the breadfruit bin at the farmers market overpowered my better judgment: if at first you don’t succeed, et cetera. Picking a medium-sized, about 1/3 green one (meaning that it was close to ripe, but not all the way), I headed home. First things first, I preheated my oven to 300, washed the fruit and skewered some holes in it, and wrapped it in foil. I roasted it for an hour total, quarter-turning every 15 minutes.

During the last 15 minutes, I diced a small white onion. Out of the oven, I let the fruit cool enough to cut it, remove the center bits, peel it, and dice it, while warming my skillet to medium-high. To the pan I added some butter and the breadfruit, and tossed it with some Vegeta. After 5 minutes or so, I added the onions. When the onions were a bit caramelized, but not charred, I removed everything to a bowl, and deglazed the pan with a cup of dark rum (Gosling, in this case), letting that reduce about 75%. I tossed the sauce into the bowl with everything else, and had a lovely accompaniment to the grilled chicken and spinach salad I’d also made.

Be aware: breadfruit has a very strange texture, if you’re not expecting it. It is a bit spongy, and can be chewy, but don’t let that deter you from this wonderful, and healthy ingredient!

Sweet and Hot Squid with Thai Basil

I love calamari, squid salad, and Italian squid pastas, but I’d never tried cooking any such cephalopod myself. As usual, cheap produce lead me to new adventures: fresh squid rings were $2.00 per pound at YDFM today, and Thai basil was $0.99/lb. So, I decided to try a Thai-esque dinner. I used:

For the sauce:
1/4 cup Thai basil
1/2 tsp. ground ginger (or 1 tsp fresh grated)
2 tsp hot pepper flakes
3/4 tbs. light soy sauce
3/4 tbs. fish sauce
2 squeezes honey (1 tsp?).

Everything Else
3/4 lbs. fresh squid rings (or whatever bits you prefer)
White hominy (I used 1 can)
Sesame oil
Rice wine
Sriracha
Lemon juice

I first asked Professor Google how long squid need to be cooked (I'm still not clear on the answer: mine were a bit rubbery), and then set to considering my sauce options. Combining a number of mixtures I’ve used over the years and the ideas I remember from squid dishes I’ve eaten, combined the above-listed sauce ingredients in a mixing bowl, and stirred them together.

Having done that, I threw some sesame oil into my wok and got it going. When the oil was hot (just beginning to sputter), I lifted the wok for a few seconds, threw in a handful of chopped basil, and returned the wok to the burner, beginning to toss the basil and oil about. Once the basil was crispy, I added my squid, stir-frying it with the oil and basil for about 1 minute.

Then, I turned down the heat to medium and stirred in my sauce. As that simmered a bit, I put my hominy in a sauce pan over low heat with a couple splashes of oil, a few of lemon juice, and a sprinkle of ginger.

My accompaniment in the works, I added the remaining basil to the squid and stirred. Then I added a few squirts of Sriracha and maybe a quarter cup of rice wine to moisten it. When the squid seemed done, I removed everything from the heat.

I served the squid over the hominy, the latter’s lemony starchiness balancing the former’s slightly sweet spiciness. All in all a successful and satisfying dinner in almost no time (total fridge-to-plate: less than 10 minutes), plus the sauce is a definite keeper: it’d be good on almost anything!

Pumpkin-Eggnog Bread Pudding

If really pressed to identify my favorite dessert, I’d probably have to go for bread pudding. I love the stuff, and have many wonderful childhood memories surrounding it. So, upon seeing Smitten Kitchen’s rendition of a Gourmet magazine recipe I’d been eyeing for Thanksgiving fare, an idea hatched. Then, speaking with a friend about the joys of properly spiked egg nog, the idea grew from a hatchling to … a whatever comes after hatchling … and then in the kitchen on Thanksgiving became a full-fledged recipe. Thanksgiving night, it died in the spectacular way that a really good dessert must: by becoming immortal, eternally embedded in thighs and love handles of diners.

Here’s how it all went:
1 ½ cups egg nog (you could probably use Lite, but then why bother?)
3/4 cup canned pumpkin (the kind that says “Ingredients: Pumpkin” and nothing else)
1/2 cup white sugar (you could experiment with brown or turbinado, but it might be a bit much)
2 large eggs
1 egg yolk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch of ground cloves
1 ½-or-so cups bourbon (optional but really important)
5 cups day-old baguette or crusty bread, cut into 1-inch bits
3/4 stick unsalted butter, melted
1 cup raisins
½ cup toasted almond slivers
Vanilla ice cream

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Put raisins and almonds and enough bourbon to cover them into a jar with a pretty good seal on the lid (can use plastic wrap). Set this aside. No, you may not have one yet. They’re not ready.
Now, stir together your pumpkin, nog, sugar, eggs, egg yolk, spices, and about 2 tablespoons of bourbon in a mixing bowl. Coat your bread bits with the melted butter in another bowl, then add the pumpkin mix and toss it so it’s all covered. No, you still may not have any of the raisins. They’re not ready. Not the almonds either.

Now, put your proto-pudding into a baking pan (preferably not too deep, maybe 2” tops) and bake until it looks done, about 20-30 minutes.

When you’re ready to serve, drain your raisins and almonds - OK, fine, you can try a few on the way, just for quality control, sure - and spread them over top of the pudding. Challenge your guests to see who’ll drink the raisin-almond-flavored bourbon, or do so yourself if you’re in to that sort of thing. You could even share!

Serve over vanilla ice cream for best effect, or eat by itself.

Nearly Dim Sum, At Home

I love dim sum, but I’ve always just left it as something I could only have outside of home. Part of its wonderfulness is the experience - grabbing random bits off the carts, trying new and strange-looking things, and of course competitive gluttony with friends. Recently this changed a bit as I stopped at the Asian grocery on my way home from dim sum, and saw the big block of taro cake on the shelf. I had to try it.

The next morning I woke early (amazing what going to bed before midnight can do!), and pondered my purchase. A quick Google didn’t turn up any particularly interesting ideas, so I decided to go a bit mad. I had made a bunch of mole last week, and had tons of leftover sauce. I also had a papaya ripening on my windowsill, in need of a purpose. So, I decided to blend some ideas together:

Now add your scallions, flipping your cakes around to make sure the scallions cook and the cakes get a good coating. Once they are nicely cooked, remove the cakes from the pan and let them cool a minute or two on a paper towel to wick off the excess oil.

Serving the cakes with fresh papaya really makes this dish: the sweet fruit balances the spicy and slightly oily cakes, and if the fruit is chilled, that makes for a nice contrast as well. Drizzle with soy sauce if you like - I’m a big salt fiend so I do. It’s almost like having dim sum at home.

Enjoy!

Ghivetch

...Not 'kvetch.' That's what I do about the cold weather, especially in the South, where such things should not occur. Ghivetch is a traditional Rumanian/Jewish vegetable stew which is a staple of my family's cold-weather kitchen.

Pack with veggies and vitamins and goodness, it's hard-core comfort food that isn't even bad for you. How's that for a treat? The basic recipe is below, but I love to mess around with it, adding bacon (of course), or even veal or duck if you're feeling ambitious.

1 cup thinly sliced carrots
1 cup fresh sliced green beans
1 cup diced potato
1/2 cup sliced celery
2 diced medium tomatoes
1 small yellow squash, thin sliced
1 small zucchini, sliced thin
1/2 red onion, thin sliced
1/2 cauliflower head, chopped
1/2 cup julienned sweet pepper (or fresh paprika, if you have it)
1/2 cup thawed frozen peas
1 cup beef stock
1/3 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 bay leaf, crumbled
1/2 tsp savory
1/2 tsp tarragon
salt

Boil your stock with the spices, and pour over veggies in a dutch oven. Bake at 350 for about an hour, or till done.

I like it over crusty bread, with a good pinot blanc.

Faux Pho

You can’t always get what you want, the cliché goes, but I’ve found that I can usually improvise to get what I need. I wanted pho. Hot, spicy, sketchy-meat filled pho. Sadly, I’m 15 miles from the nearest acceptable option, in the middle of midterms, and flat broke.

Lucky for me, I had some (faux?) pho bullion cubes leftover from a previous (and abortive) attempt at making the stuff myself, so I wondered if I couldn’t whip up something close enough. What I ended up with only resembled the real thing in its flavor undertones and hot-soupness. I probably should have added some more star anise.

The good news is, despite not being what I really wanted, my soup was delicious and satisfied my craving for hearty comfort food. Here’s what I used:

2 pho bullion cubes (Chay brand);
3 cups water;
A bunch of mixed dried mushrooms;
Some frozen (thawed) veggies - snow peas, broccoli, onion, kale;
About a pound of frozen (thawed) mahi-mahi;
Hot red pepper flakes;
Fresh basil (about 10-12 leaves);
A splash of Mirin;
Some stale sourdough bread.

Yeah, I keep some strange stuff in my pantry.

Here’s what I did:

I boiled the water to dissolve the pho cubes, and reduced the heat to medium for a slow boil, adding the mushrooms. Then I added the veggies, which I’d resuscitated from cryo-stasis in the microwave, and the fish (thawed in a cold water bath and cubed). I let the mix return to a boil, and after a few minutes tasted it and decided hot pepper flakes were in order. So I added a few shakes.

While that boiled away (for about 12-15 minutes), I prepared my serving bowl by turning the bread (as I had no noodles handy) and making croutons - tear up and bake about 5 minutes at 450 degrees - and tearing the basil into it. When the fish was cooked through (flaky and white, not grey and hard or à poil as you’d eat it normally), I ladled some into the bowl.

I added soy sauce and fish sauce and sriracha, but even without them, the flavor was good. It would have been nice to have fresh lime and bean sprouts too, but oh well. I was happy! The sourdough was actually the nicest surprise: it really set off the soup’s flavors. Has anyone ever seen or made sourdough pasta? That might be a good thing for me to keep around.

Fall Pasta

Sometimes, when you cook something haphazardly, and the results are … haphazard. On rare, wonderful occasions, they are delicious and satisfying and worth repeating in a more orderly fashion. It’s October - properly fall now - and my first proper dish of the season was one of these delightful surprises; I’ll make it again without a doubt, and a bit of advance planning will make it even more amazing.

I love fall: the weather cools and the season’s earthy flavors make a nice letting down from summer’s exuberance before winter’s deeper and richer ones. My favorite fall ingredient of all is probably the most iconic, at least in the States: pumpkin. At the farmers market this week, I spied the first batch, rich orange with spiky grayish-brown stems, and bought two. It’s not yet cold enough here for my pumpkin curry, so I looked for another idea. Drawing from vague memories and, as I am in fact still a grad student, what was really cheap, I also purchased some really beautiful beets, and fresh sage.

Come dinner-prepping time, I was in the mood for pasta. How could I make my pumpkin-y schemes fit this new craving? Another memory flickered through my mind, this time of a creamy squash pasta, somewhere in DC, many years ago. Funny how I can remember things like this, but not the names and dates needed for my communications exam…

I messed about for a while, but ultimately this is what I used:

1 medium pumpkin, cut into 1-ish inch chunks (about 3 cups worth);
2 large beets, cleaned and similarly cubed;
1 pound whole wheat penne;
7 cloves garlic, chopped;
12 fresh sage leaves, torn into bits;
½ cup light cream;
½ cup milk (2%);
Sriracha;
Fresh-grated Parmesan;
Olive Oil;
Salt and pepper.

What I did:

I prepped everything as above. Ideally, I’d have pre-roast the beets halfway, but I am lazy so I just microwaved them for about 9 minutes; this softens them up so they can be sautéed with the pumpkin, saving some time. Once that was done, I added both beets and pumpkins to a pan over medium-high heat, with a bunch of olive oil and some salt. I sautéed them until everything was tender, but not quite fully done, and removed to a bowl, where I stirred in about half of the chopped garlic and sage.

While that was cooking, I boiled my pasta, adding a small piece of beet to that pot to make the pasta pink, because I was feeling that cheeky. When the pasta was slightly under-done (just before proper al dente), I drained and put it, along with the sautéed pumpkin and beets, into a large pot over low-medium heat. Then I mixed in milk, cream, and the rest of the spices. As it heated, I slowly added Parmesan until it was a bit gooey, but not super-cheesy (I didn’t want mac+cheese). Finally, I added sriracha, salt and pepper.

I served it with a bit more Parmesan on top, and it was fantastic. The pumpkin and beet really sing together, especially with all that dairy to mellow the beets’ sharpness. I’ve been enjoying the leftovers ever since, and found that adding some chicken chorizo really kicked things up, both in terms of flavor and fillingness.

Sopa de La Mancha

Now that the weather is starting to turn cool, I’ve been thinking about earthier flavors and darker colors. And soups. I know that there’s a soup for any weather, but except for gazpacho, I want nothing to do with the stuff in summer. But recently I was treated to another Spanish soup, which is in my mind a perfect fall dish. I don’t know what it’s really called, but the friend who made it claims this to be “something I learned from my nan” says it’s from Don Quixote’s own La Mancha region of Spain. Why a Spanish girl calls her grandmother ‘nan’ is anyone’s guess.

Here’s the recipe:

4 cups beef stock
4 eggs
2 tbs olive oil
4 large peeled cloves of garlic
4 slices stale country breads (We used cibatta, which was good but maybe something more sour would be better)
4 tbs paprika
¼ tsp ground cumin

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees (F), and set out four oven-safe bowls.

In a saucepan, fry whole peeled garlic cloves in the oil until they are golden; set them aside. Fry your bread until it’s golden and set that aside too. Now, add 1 tablespoon of the paprika to the pot, let it fry a few seconds, and then add the rest of the paprika, cumin, and stock. Let it get hot but not quite boiling.

Crush your garlic with a spoon, and it back to the pot, along with some salt and pepper. Cook 5 minutes over medium heat. While that’s happening, break the bread up into bits into the bowls - one slice each.

Ladle the hot soup into the bowls (I recommend having them on a tray or something that you can put into the oven - it makes transportation easier). Break an egg into each bowl, and put the lot in the oven for about 3 minutes, until the eggs are set.

Enjoy!

Peanut Vargoli (Tindora) with Tofu

Continuing my adventures with strange vegetables from the farmers market, this week I noticed an older Indian woman being very excited to her shopping companions over a pile of small, gherkin-shaped vegetables labeled “Tindora.” My curiosity piqued, I asked her what they were and how to cook them. Her reply was that she called them “Vargoli” - the Hindi to Gujarati’s “Tindora” and the English “Ivy Gourd” - and that she sliced them and stir-fried them with mustard seed, cumin and turmeric; her companion added that ground peanuts were a good garnish. They also suggested that I pick only long skinny ones, and if any turned out to be orange inside, I shouldn’t use them.

With all this in mind, I picked myself a bag of little gourds to take home with a fresh turmeric root and a brick of firm tofu. At home, I added my own ideas to the mix, and this is what I used:

About 20 ivy gourds/tindoras/vargolis;
1 block of firm tofu, well drained and cut to cubes;
1 root of fresh turmeric;
About 1/2 tsp each cumin seeds and mustard seeds;
Peanut oil;
Organic/all-natural creamy peanut butter;
Mirin;
Sriracha;

While the tofu drained, I cut the ends off of and quartered each gourd and heated up my cast iron pan with a drizzle of peanut oil.

Reducing the heat to medium, I added the cumin and mustard seeds, letting them bounce around under my splatter screen until they were brown. I then added more oil, grated in about an inch of turmeric, and added the gourds and some sriracha. I stir-fried all this for a few minutes, not letting the gourd get totally soft. I removed it to a bowl.

Adding more oil to the pan, as well as another sprinkle of seeds and turmeric, I fried the tofu until it was nice and crispy on the outside, but still smushy on the inside. Then I removed that to another bowl.

While the tofu cooked, I put about a tablespoon of peanut butter, 2 tablespoons mirin, and 1 tsp sriracha into a small glass, which I microwaved for 20 seconds and mixed into a paste. I added more oil and a bit of water to make it more liquidy.

I then added all three pieces together in a large bowl, tossing the peanut sauce all over. The gourd itself has a mild flavor, not unlike a cucumber bur more sour and less … green tasting. It was really delicious with the peanut sauce. The tofu was, of course, tofu, and absorbed all the flavors like the good little sponge it is. Overall, this was a very tasty dinner which, at least partially due to my laziness and consequent lack of rice, was really quite healthy too!

L'Academie, Week 7: Eggs

(Watch out--the first five words of this article are boring, but it gets better from there.)

Health department regulations state that (See? I told you.) real hollandaise sauce must be re-made every hour at restaurants to prevent food poisoning. While this prevents you from contracting salmonella poisoning, it also means that most restaurants just use a hollandaise sauce mix in their eggs benedict instead of going to all the trouble to constantly remake the real stuff during the brunch rush. Here's how to make Hollandaise Sauce yourself, at home, in your PJs, for less trouble than you'd take to find a parking space near a good brunch place on a Sunday morning.

Separate the whites and yolks of a bunch of eggs. (Three eggs per person is plenty, and you'll have leftovers.) Do this by cracking them a flat surface, not a corner, which will drive pointy bits into the white. Let the yolk settle into one half of the shell and let the white fall out. Pour from one half-shell to the other--carefully--until the white is mostly gone. Pour the yolks into a metal bowl.

Whisk the yolks furiously until they are the consistency of cake batter. This takes awhile, so make sure you have spent the night with someone who is willing to do half the work for breakfast. They should be slightly lighter yellow than unwhisked yolks. Put the bowl over a pot of lightly simmering water (but not touching the water) and leave it there to keep warm, but not cook the yolks. Now slowly pour in some lemon juice (roughly two easy squeezes from a lemon half, I'd say) while still whisking rapidly to emulsify it. Whisk in some warm, melted butter the same way; clarified is good, but not necessary. Keep whisking until it is a consistency you want to eat, and add some cayenne if you want.

Next up: Grains! (Yawn. But I'll tell you how to make coconut sticky rice.)

L'Academie, Week 5

This week focused on salads, mushrooms, and vinaigrettes, which was great because up until this class I was proud of myself if I mixed my own Caesar salad rather than buy it in a bag. I could never figure out why my own made-up salads didn't turn out well, but I didn't care very much. I was salad-challenged.

I took that class six days ago, and since then I have eaten the following salad three times:

Panzanella, Or Italian Tomato Bread Salad

Chop up half a shallot and put in in the blender. Pour in a few glugs of sherry vinegar, and then turn on the blender. Then and only then, use the little hole in the top to sloooowly pour in about two to three times as much oil as you did vinegar, as the blender is still on....it should take you at least thirty seconds to add the oil if you're doing it slowly enough. I used extra-virgin olive oil, basil-flavored olive oil, and then some canola so the olive taste wouldn't take over.

That makes one ugly vinaigrette, so cheer it up a little bit by tossing in a slice or two of tomato. I used red heirloom tomatoes and they were perfect, but when I went to Whole Foods for more tomatoes (it's an obsession) they were like $6.00 a pound, so I bought vine-ripened instead and they were lovely, too.

Rip up a few pieces of tough bread per person (I used a crusty baguette), and chop up another tomato (or two or three) into bite-sized pieces. Mix them together in a serving bowl, and pour the vinagrette over it, tossing as you go. Don't soak the bread--just get it damp. If you didn't use basil-flavored olive oil (and even if you did), slice up some basil leaves and stir them in. Finish with crumbled parmesan, and serve over spinach leaves.

Sweet, Bitter, and Bacon

In the US we tend not to eat much in the way of extremely bitter foods - grapefruit and endive are about as bitter as we go. Despite this, I love bitter foods, and I’d long wondered about the things at the farmers market - the strange ones with bizarrely textured, bright green skin. So today I asked the girl at one stall how one might cook a bitter melon. Her response: “However you want...I usually stir-fry them or boil and mash them. They’re so tasty!” It turns out that they’re really good for you too - perhaps helping to regulate digestion and improving blood sugar control.

Mission in mind, I returned home with three medium-sized ones, deciding to go the mashed route, as I also had a sweet potato and I wondered if they might play well together. With some helpers along for the ride, they did:

I put my sweet potato into the oven for baking; since I’m currently without a microwave, I have to do things the slow way. I washed and cut the melons in half, scooped out the seeds (which I’ve since been told are good to eat too, but I wasn’t sure, and they seemed rather crunchy for a mash), and cut the flesh into inch-wide bits. I put them in a pot of broth to boil.

After a few minutes (maybe seven or so), the melon smelled so good, I thought it would be a waste to boil all of that flavor away, and an idea popped into my head. I got out my frying pan and added some bacon. Bacon half-cooked, I moved the melon from pot to pan and sautéed the lot till the melon was mostly soft(ish), adding hot pepper flakes and Vegeta when I felt like it.

By this time my potato was baked, so I removed the peel, added a touch of olive oil and mashed it up. Then, I mashed up my melon and mixed it into the potato, stirring the bacon (now crisp and in pretty small pieces) on top. The bacon was, I think, key - its earthiness really unified the sweet and bitter flavors.

The results were quite tasty, and though more tweaking will be necessary before I think this dish is “complete,” I wanted to share it and see what other folks have done with this funny little fruit.

L'Academie de Cuisine, Week 4

So class last night focused on vegetables: specifically which kinds stand up best in which preparation. The preparations we practiced were:

Confit - tiny pieces cooked very slowly in a good amount of fat. Surprisingly, red cabbage prepared this way (with some granny smith apple bits) is absolutely luscious. (If my parents are reading this, they just laughed out loud at the idea of me liking red cabbage, because when I was two I flung red cabbage across a crowded restaurant. It was the start of my career being particular about what I ate, and also of being a little dramatic.)

Roasting - You know what this is: cooked in an oven, maybe with a little fat to prevent overdrying. Brings out the sweetness and softens veggies.

Braising - browned on the stove with oil and/or butter, then deglazed (scrape the pan with some wine) and cooked in a little liquid (like chicken stock) in the oven until tender. Surprisingly easy and gorgeous with fennel or squash. Add balsamic and honey to balance the flavors.

Carmelizing - used on onions, mostly. First, sweat them on low heat until soft, not allowing them to brown. Once they are completely soft, add some wine, deglaze, and turn up the heat so that they brown evenly.

Blanching - boiling briefly in salted water to season and seal in the color, then plunging into an ice bath to prevent mushiness. (I first became aware of this as the "shock and awe" method.) Also good for loosening skins without actually cooking the vegetable, like for tomatoes.

Gratinee - blanched, then stirred into a bechamel with grainy mustard and a little cheese. Contrary to what I figured before, gratinee does not mean "drowned in cheese;" it means "browned." The browning comes from baking until bubbly, and maybe passing it under the broiler for a minute. (I'm not entirely sure how this even counts as a vegetable.) Our instructor did this with cauliflower last night, and it was sumptuous. I'll be making that again this weekend.

L'Academie de Cuisine, Week 3

When one realizes that one's reputation as a gastronaut and a chef has begun to outstrip one's actual abilities, one would do well to enroll in L'Academie de Cuisine's 20-week semi-professional program. Culinary Techniques 101, which is offered twice a year, focuses on learning to cook without recipes; instead, learning the techniques and thought processes that one needs to become a creative chef. I'll be updating occasionally with what I've learned from each session.

Week 3 focuses on soups, and because it is too hot to talk about butternut squash soup with maple, sage, and bacon (wait till October, and remind me if I forget), I'll now share with you how to make a gorgeous white gazpacho, which is a much better summertime dish. My instructor shared with us the list of ingredients, and I looked at epicurious.com for the approximate proportions, but didn't really measure anything, so please don't take the measurements as gospel.

White Gazpacho
half a stale baguette, ripped into bite-sized pieces
1 cups ice water
2 cups chicken stock
handful sliced almonds
2 cloves garlic
3/4 pound seedless green grapes
3 tablespoons white wine vinegar
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
several healthy shakes of Tabasco
1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
6 oz sour cream (do not use fat-free; that stuff is revolting.)

Put this all in a blender and whirl it around. My blender wouldn't fit it all, so I put half the stuff in with the stock and half with the water, and stirred it up together in a big bowl afterwards. I now have enough gazpacho to last me through the week, unless someone else finds it in the fridge and snarfs it down first.

(The author started this entry with a rather grand tone involving what "one" ought to do, and ended with "snarf." She finds herself so entertaining.)

Mediterranean Red Snapper

My grandmothers are all very picky eaters, but in very different ways. My mother's mother has a long list of allergies and other diet-limiting conditions, so no one can blame her. My paternal grandmother, who lives here in DC and eats dinner with my parents (and often me) most Sundays, on the other hand, simply does not like vegetables.

She'll eat lettuce, carrots, cooked onions, asparagus and the occasional eggplant, but that's about it. This makes cooking a healthy and delicious meal rather a challenge on Sunday nights, and has inspired not only our creative efforts but also, in the case of this dish, our subversive humors.

You see, the vegetable that my paternal grandmother hates more than anything is squash. Yellow, green, pumpkin, or zucchini, she will at any restaurant return any dish served to her with squash anywhere on it. The thing is, my mom and I love the stuff. So, we sometimes find ways to sneak it in to dishes anyway.

Like this (adjust all proportions to taste):
4 lbs. fresh red snapper
3 large yellow onions
1.5 cups whole green olives, chopped in thirds
3 28 oz cans of diced tomatoes, drained (can use fresh as well)\
1 3.5 oz jar of capers
½ a yellow squash, chopped very fine (to hide)
1-2 tbs coarsely ground black pepper
1 tbs red pepper flakes
½ tsp. chopped garlic
Feta cheese
Olive oil

Chop and sautee onions in oil with the garlic and some salt.
Once the onions are soft, dump in the tomatoes, capers, squash, pepper and salt (to taste), cover and simmer 10-15 mins until the squash is done.
Salt and pepper the fish.
Ladle some of this sauce into a glass baking pan, lay the fish over it, and cover in the rest of the sauce. Top with about 8 oz. crumbled feta, and bake at 350 until done – 30-40 minutes.

Serve with a good, hearty bread or over rice.

Mid-Atlantic Fusion Bourne of Atlanta Exile

It’s summer, and for natives of (and most transplants to) the Mid-Atlantic region of the US, that means one thing more than any other: crab season! Whether consumed in a violent orgy of mallets and shells or more demurely in delicious cake form, this is the season for the yummy little bastards. The thing is, I up and moved to Atlanta, where crabs are just a one-night stand’s lasting impression, and mentioning “Old Bay” will just get you asked if you don’t mean “Green.”

As is so often the case, my salvation came by pure providence. I had purchased some crab meat from the grocery - the crappy packaged kind that looks like it ought to be fake but isn’t - and was planning to do something vaguely fritter-ish. But, before dinner could be considered, I was headed to the gym, and needed a pre-workout snack. I pulled down a handful of crackers, and dipped one in a fresh tub of hummus.

Lesson one: don’t buy store-brand hummus in a Southern grocery.

Panic-stricken - for if my snack went this badly I’d never have the focus to exercise - I reached for the first thing I could see to overwhelm the sour horror of that hummus-product. My crab purchase had been inspired, of course, by coming upon a tin of Old Bay at the market. It was now sitting on the counter, just before my eyes.

That experiment worked, so I experimented more. Using good hummus this time, I mixed in about 1/2 tablespoon of Old Bay per cup, and spooned the mixture into a small bowl. I fried the crab bits in an Old Bay-flour mix as well. Then I let them cool, dried them, arranged them around the hummus mixture (with Triscuits), and an hors d’ouvres plate was born!

Passin' round the basil

Groups of women sharing herbs. Sharing herbs is, in a cultural sense at least, what groups of women are *for*. Herbs for impressing a guy, herbs for bandaging up a kid, and herbs, historically at least, for when you don’t have the first and are in danger of the second. Women passing around herbs - it might as well be the definition of society.

My personal herb sharing network – ooh, that sounds so much more illicit than it actually is – says right now is the time to pass around some Basil. I know this because I got handed some this morning over the wall of my cube. Apparently the super hot weather we’ve been having has been perfect for Basil growin’, and now that it’s cooled down it’s time to munch before the plants start to do some crazy flowering.

But while gifting is all very well, what do you do with all that fresh Basil?

We asked Pee Jim, absurdly capable guide of Khmer ruins to high-ranking military officials in the Thailand university town of Burriram (it has its own market!) near the Cambodia border. And even tho as a devout Buddhist she often fasts after 12, she’s willing to do a bit of culinary creativity for the local monestary; feed the monks, get a blessing. But not the nuns – their major spiritual duty seems to be washing the dishes.

Pee Jim’s fried basil w/ chicken wings, adapted with a lot of internet help

Mix together:
1 tablespoon fish sauce
A bit of finely chopped lemongrass if you’ve got it.
10-15 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 tablespoons chopped fresh red chilis
quarter cup chopped cilantro
quarter cup rice whisky (or whatever sort you have around
2 tbsp olive oil (my addition)
2 tbsp of ketchup

Cut off the tips of a couple dozen wing, rinse and dry ‘em off, toss them into the marinade, and stick the whole thing in the fridge overnight. Grill or bake ‘em at 375 'till they're nice and crispy.

Holy basil is what you really want for this - but go for the smaller leaves of other varieties if you have to. Rinse off and dry your basil – lots and lots of it, and strip the leaves. I mean it about drying it well, squeeze it out between paper towels and lay it flat for a little while if you have to.

Get a nice big wok with a couple inches of peanut oil and heat it super hot, almost to smoking – a drop of water should spit all over the place. Then drop in handfuls of the leaves – they’ll only need a few seconds to get nice and crispy – and lift ‘em out with a slotted spoon to drain on a paper towel.

Gently mix together the leaves and wings to keep from crushing them. Toss in another handful of chopped red chilies – or you might want to saute the chilis up a bit first. A sprinkle of salt over the finished product…It’s a dish fit for a monk.

Bloody Pretentious Tacos

Tacos can’t possibly be pretentious, right? Wrong: when you find yourself at the farmers market and faced with $2 per pound ground lamb and gorgeous $3 tubs of pico de gallo, evil schemes begin to hatch. Those two ingredients in basket, I looked around for more markety goodness to add.

Ultimately I ended up heading home with a gorgeous looking poblano pepper and a bag of Vidalia onions (which I go through like crazy, as they are awesome), and started in the usual way: putting my ever-more-beautifully-seasoned pan on my seriously-underpowered stove to heat up. It takes about 6-8 minutes to get very hot, so I have time to chop.

--1 lb. ground lamb
--1 poblano pepper (diced)
--1/2 of a Vidalia onion (diced)
--Fish sauce
--Vegeta

Once the pan was hot enough, I added the meat and some salt, and reduced the heat to medium. When it was about halfway done, I drained most of the grease and added the peppers and onions, as well as a few shakes of fish sauce and a few of Vegeta. When it was almost done, I popped my soft flour tortillas in the microwave (unnecessary if you don’t keep them in the fridge/aren’t too lazy to make them fresh). I removed everything from the pan using a straining spoon, to minimize my grease consumption. It’s tasty, yeah, but I my arteries can only take so much!

I garnished the tacos with my lovely fresh pico de gallo, queso blanco, and a dash of hot sauce. They were delicious, and while pondering this it did occur to me that they were also ridiculous: Bloody Pretentious Tacos!

On A Fish Frenzy

Ever since the weather started reasonably cooperating, I've been on a grilled fish kick. I get home, and it's all I want to cook, since it's quick and outdoors, and all I want to eat, since it's fresh and light tasting. Plus, I've recently discovered (like MAW) that those Trader Joe's frozen fish fillets taste better than I ever expected.

Last Monday, I did tilapia. Since grilling makes me think of corn on the cob, I was brought to think of my favorite way of preparing the vegetable (namely, using lime butter with chili powder), and figured the combination of flavors would lend itself well to fish. Sure did - a squirt of lime juice, a dash of powder, a dollop of butter and everything came together. Served it with a roasted red potato with cumin, and steamed green beans.

This Monday, it was Mahi Mahi. I didn't go too crazy on the marinade (just a little salt and citrus), but I topped the fish with a salsa made of fresh tomatoes, avocado, lime, red onion and a little turkey bacon (namely because these were ingredients I needed to use up). A red wine risotto with spinach and peas served as my side (a bit indulgent, given the main course, but it seemed a good idea at the time).

Tonight, I gave cod a shot. I had one lone piece of prosciutto left from some appetizers I made recently. I soaked the fish in a bit of Worcestershire sauce, seasoned, and then wrapped the fish in the prosciutto. Cheated on the side dishes, though - frozen fries from TJ's coated in garlic salt, and a carrot/bean vegetable medly weren't inspired choices, but they were easy ones.

All these recipes, by the way, are thirty minute meals without the annoying acronyms and exclamations of "Yummo." Next week, I'm thinking my favorite tuna recipe - coated in red, black and white pepper, seared, and served over white beans simmered with sage. What's your favorite way to grill fish?

Taking the Easy Way

What can I say? I’m lazy. I want good, home-cooked food, but I don’t want to plan for it more than an hour (at most) in advance. Also because I’m lazy, I’ve become a bit addicted to the frozen, individually-wrapped fish fillets from the grocery store. It’s not the best quality fish, but bit’s relatively cheap and easy to deal with. Last night, I was pretty totally uninterested in going to the grocery store to pick up any items that might help make a meal out of my individually-wrapped mahi-mahi fillet, which I’d set out to defrost on a whim that morning.

So, I decided to see what I could do with what I already had lying about. (Luckily, I am aware of my own laziness, so I keep a pretty good stock of non-perishable basics lying about the pantry.) Here’s what I had:

4 oz. mahi-mahi fillet, thawed;
Lemon juice;
(Vietnamese) Fish sauce;
Garbanzo beans;
Leftover brown jasmine rice;
A mango;
Coconut milk;
Sugar;
Spices;
Olive oil;
Hot sesame oil.

I cut the fish in four, placed it in a bowl, and covered with lemon juice, adding about a teaspoon of fish sauce. I stirred it around, and then left it there, to consider next steps. While the fish marinated, I drained a can of garbanzos, adding about 1/3 of the can to a bowl and putting the rest away, and added about the same volume of rice to the bowl.

In a small glass, I mixed olive oil (about 3 tbs), a splash of sesame oil, and two splashed (maybe a teaspoon?) of lemon juice. I sprinkled in a couple shakes of dried basil, a couple of thyme, and a pinch of pepper.

I also put my pan on the stove, added some salt to it, and got it really, really hot.

By this time, the fish had been in the lemon juice about 15 minutes (I’d stirred and turned it every now and again too), so I removed it, patted it dry with a paper towel, and rubbed all sides with a little bit of basil.

I put the rice-and-garbanzo bowl in the microwave and set the timer for a minute, but didn’t start it, and then added some oil to my pan, followed by the fish. After a minute, I flipped the fish over, and hit start on the microwave. When it finished, I took out the bowl, tossed with my glass of dressing, and removed the fish on top of all that. Then, less than half an hour after I started, I ate, and it was really tasty.

Tasty, but I also wanted dessert. Hey, it’s finals week, I get dessert if I want it! After such a meal, the only dessert that I could think of wanting was mango sticky rice. But that takes time (and other ingredients)! Again, I improvised:

Cube half a medium-sized mango, and add to a bowl of pre-cooked rice. Add coconut milk to cover halfway, about a teaspoon-and-a-half sugar, and a pinch (a SMALL pinch) of ginger. Stir. Microwave one minute. Stir. Microwave one minute. Stir. Microwave 30 seconds. Stir. Eat!

See mom? Cutting corners really can get you places!

Midterms: Snack Within Reach

The thing you forget, when you’ve been out of school for a while, is how annoying exams can be: it’s not even that you don’t know the material or that it’s so difficult, it's just that they sneak up on you. And you worry about little things. Especially on take-homes, which seem like they ought to be easiest: even if the text sucks and you’ve skipped all semester so don’t have notes, Professor Google is available to rescue you. But the catch is (if you’re a bit OCD like me), that you spend a million years making sure every answer is perfect.

What’s this got to do with food, you ask? Well, studying brains need fuel, of course! And what with time constraints and general student poverty, studying brains need a certain kind of food: fast, cheap, and (preferably) healthy!

While working on a particularly unsavory take-home midterm (not a hard one at all – so easy and pointless, in fact, that it took Herculean effort to muster the will to do it), I decided I needed a slightly tastier lunch than the habitual bowl of Cheerios. I had a craving for my Haitian-not-grandmother’s red beans and rice, but she lives in DC and my time was short; real cooking was out of the question.

Surveying my kitchen for a suitable substitute, I found the following:

Leftover saffron rice;
Half of a Vidalia onion;
A can of red kidney beans (unsweetened);
Olive oil;
Hot sauce (I used Walkerswood Jonkanoo – another might be better for the less masochistic chef) ;
Garlic salt;
Turmeric.

And, of course, the lazy chef’s ultimate hero: a microwave.

I took a bunch of the rice, added about half the can of beans, and nuked that in a bowl for 2 minutes to get everything nice and warm (not very hot, though that’s up to you). Then, I chopped onion until I had about 2 handfuls worth. I added that, a couple tablespoons of olive oil, and a tablespoon or so of hot sauce to the rice and bean bowl.

I stirred, added garlic salt and black pepper till it seemed right, a bit of turmeric, and ate it.

I was soon much happier, and managed to finish that evil bloody midterm.

Tandoori Thai Eggplant Bites

Hosting a party can be stressful. I have a horrible tendency of setting a date, making the guest list and sending out invitations, not to mention planning music and making CDs, well in advance, only to find myself in a messy apartment with an empty fridge the morning of said event. As a result, my parties tend to rely more on the right mix of music, booze, and people (and often, explosives) rather than gourmet munchies.

Not that this has ever really been a problem, but sometimes I feel like I should at least have some quick-and-easy hors d’ouvres recipes lying around, for emergencies. And sometimes, homework is not nearly as appealing as a trip to the farmers market followed by experimentation in the kitchen.

Today was one of those times, and even though I don’t plan to host any parties for a good while, I ended up making (for dinner) a dish that I’ll be more than happy to serve at my next soirée. Assuming I remember to make it.

Like nearly everything I make, this was done on the fly, so I encourage people to fiddle with it all to get what you want.

Ingredients:
Thai eggplants (I used 6, which was plenty for my dinner),
2 tbs. Tandoori spice powder (I used Sharwood's),
2.5 tbs. Champagne vinegar,
2 tbs. lemon juice,
4 tbs. olive oil.

Preheat your oven to 350.

Decapitate your eggplants, and cut them in half. Mix all the other stuff together in a glass, and spoon enough of it over each eggplant slice (the inside side, not the skin side) to cover the whole surface. Put that in the oven for about 17 minutes, remove and let cool.

You could marinate the eggplant in the sauce for a more powerful flavor, but I think that might be a bit much, and make it a less appealing finger food.

See? Tasty and fancy-sounding hors d’ouvres in just 20 minutes!

Chipotle Spiked Sautee

I have a thing for hot sauces. Ok, well, actually I'm a sucker for odd sauces and spices in general, but I'm especially fond of hot ones. Knowing this, my sister presented me, as my Christmukkah present, a Hot Sauce of the Month subscription. This month's shipment included a mild selection, Tres Hermanos Chipotle Hot Sauce.

I love chipotles, but I find it hard to use them without making a dish seem forcibly "Mexican," which can be good or not, depending on my mood. Sometimes though, inspiration (by which I mean experimentation born of boredom) strikes, and someth