Chanterelle bruschetta

So I tried out the chanterelle bruschetta recipe that Lemon Verbena-san pointed me to. Here's the link, in link format. I'll go ahead and run it down here, with apologies to Nami Nami from Estonia, because this place has already become my go-to recipe box.

Ingredients:
Chanterelle mushrooms, the more the better (I used golden chanterelles; I see white ones at the market, but I haven't tried them yet)
1 red onion
garlic (I used the minced garlic you get in a jar, maybe a couple of teaspoons)
butter
olive oil
fresh dill (how much? the original recipe doesn't say; I used maybe a half cup, loosely packed, and I think I'll use maybe twice that next time)
good bread (I used a potato rustica, and it was a good choice, if I do say so myself: the potato-flour was a perfect match for the chanterelles and the dill)

1. Cut up the mushrooms into bite-size pieces.

2. Chop the onion. I chopped it in the food processor, thinking the finer the better, but it came out too fine and sort of turned into a glop when I put it in to sautee it. It was still awesome, but I think I should have chopped it by hand, and just tried to get it as small as I could that way.

3. Chop the dill. I also found that the dill tended to clump together when sauteeing, and maybe dried dill wouldn't have done that, but the flavor of the fresh dill was so good that I'd hesitate to substitute. Maybe chop finer?

4. Melt a little butter in a frying pan with a little olive oil (possibly the clumping of the onion and dill came from too much butter and oil: try it with just a little).

5. Sautee the mushrooms with the garlic, then add the onion and dill in that order.

6. Toast the bread in the oven as per normal bruschetta (the original recipe asks you to pan-fry it in butter, which sounded like just too much butter for me). I.e., brush one side with olive oil, put the bread oil side down on a foil-lined baking sheet, bake at 350 until it gets nice and toasty.

7. Spoon on the mushroom mixture, grind a little salt over everything, and you're done.

As you can tell, I did a lot of things wrong when I made it, but it still came out amazingly good. This shows off the true flavor of a chanterelle.

We paired the bruschetta with steamed asparagus topped with shavings of aged gouda. Yummy.

Baking

Does anyone make pies/tarts? Apple season is coming up and my local farmer's market is going to be overflowing with apples that are tempting on, like, Old Testament levels :) Ideas? Tried and true recipes? Mind you, I don't generally bake. I don't generally do dessert so I have very little experience in this way.

Help!

yay Trader Joe's

So I got some exciting things at Trader Joe's last week and I used two of those exciting things in my dinner last night. I got a bag of tiny tiny tiny potatoes (each one is like half a ping-pong ball) with thin skins and a package of fully cooked andouille style chicken sausages. SO this is what I did

1 bag tiny potatoes
2 chicken sausages
extra virgin olive oil for drizzling
fresh rosemary leaves (off the stems)
salt
garlic powder (I used a salt/garlic/pepper seasoning thing)

throw your potatoes into a baking dish (small enough to have them all touching and layered and stuff) and slice your sausage into rounds over top. Drizzle the oil. Sprinkle the seasonings and the rosemary and stir it all a little folding the sausage in with the potatoes. Cover it with tin foil and bake at 350 degrees for about an hour or until the potatoes are the desired tenderness.

You could totally use some small-chunked larger potatoes like red skins or some other kind that you don't have to peel. The best part about this dinner is that it took about 5 minutes to throwq together and then I just did homework while I waited and then got to enjoy a nice hearty dinner :)

Chanterelles

Speaking of mushrooms, we've got chanterelles in season here, big golden things. I made a sort of scrambly omelet with them tonight: sauteed the chopped chanterelles in butter and pepper, then cooked them in eggs with sour cream. Real good. I can't wait to get more of these beauties, but I realized that beyond omelets I really don't know what to do with them. I seem to remember trying a couple of things last fall, but I don't remember what worked besides the eggs. With most mushrooms I tend to like just sauteeing them with salt and pepper, but people say chanterelles need a little more work to bring out their best flavor. Any suggestions?

Waldorf salad variations?

We had some apples that were getting old, and some silverberries that we'd gotten at the farmer's market that we wanted to use, so I decided to try a Waldorf salad - sort of a commonplace, but I don't think I've ever made it before. Unfortunately we didn't have all the right ingredients, so I ended up making something that didn't much resemble a real Waldorf salad, but ended up working out pretty well anyway.

Ingredients:
3 apples (I don't remember what kind they were - red, sweet, and very ripe)
1 cup or so silverberries
a couple handfuls of raisins
mayonnaise
lime juice
1/3 cup or so of creamy/crumbly chevre (we had some fig-walnut chevre that was hitting its expiration date, so I threw it in)

1. Peel, core, and cut up the apples into bite-size chunks.

2. Mix them with the berries and raisins.

3. Mix together 6 tablespoons of mayo and 2 tablespoons of lime juice. In a real Waldorf salad this is supposed to be lemon juice, but we were out, and lime juice worked well.

4. Mix the dressing and the fruit.

5. Add the crumbled chevre, mix. (A real Waldorf salad is evidently supposed to have walnuts, and we didn't have any, but that's what gave me the idea to use the cheese.)

6. Chill for a couple of hours. We had some of this right after making it, and it wasn't as good as it was when it had chilled for a while. Warm, the mayo tasted like mayo. Chilled and given time for the flavors to mingle, the mayo taste receded and we had a nice mingling of fruit flavors.

Note: have you ever had/seen/heard of silverberries? I hadn't until we got them at the market, but they're pretty good. They evidently come from this tree, and I can't seem to find much about them on the web, which makes me wonder if they go by another name; anyway, I'd never heard of them. They're quite small, not much bigger than pomegranate seeds, and bright red with kind of a silver spot on them. They have seeds, but the ones we got were edible with the seeds - once in a while you get a berry where the seed's a little chewy, but it's still edible. The berries have a nice tartness, not as strong as huckleberries, and a nice sweet aftertaste.

Anyway: this salad was kind of an accident, but it turned out well. Does anybody else have any recommendable variations on the Waldorf-type fruit salad?

Rosemary Mushroom Risotto

I was determined to get good at risotto, and I'm pretty decent at it now. This is our main recipe:

1 cup mushroom broth
2 cups vegetable broth
3/4 cup water
1/2 tsp crumbled rosemary
1/4 tsp thyme
2 Tbs olive oil
1 1/2 cups chopped mushrooms (any kind)
2 Tbs minced shallots (white onion will do fine)
1 cup arborio rice
1/3 cup shredded Parmesan
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/4 tsp salt, to taste
1/8 tsp pepper

1. In a smallish saucepan, heat broth, water, rosemary and thyme until simmering. Keep on med-low to keep it warm throughout cooking time.
2. When broth is ready, heat oil in 3-quart saucepan on medium. Add the mushrooms and shallots and cook, stirring, until mushrooms soften (a couple of minutes). Add rice and cook, stirring, until rice is coated with oil (a minute or so).
3. Add broth to rice mixture 1/2 cup at a time, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until rice has absorbed the liquid. (You should make the next addition of liquid when you can draw a clear path on the bottom of the pot as you scrape through the rice.) This process should take about half an hour.
4. Add parsley, pepper and salt with the last bit of broth and stir in well. Serve topped with parmesan.

A couple of notes: I live at high altitude so I have to use more broth/water. Also, the first couple of broth additions should be closer to a cup--adding broth a little fast in the beginning helps the rice cook. Last, if you taste as you go the risotto will taste really bland until it's almost done because the broth/water is still reducing, so don't worry about adding salt unless it still taste bland at the end.

You can use any mushrooms, obviously. I've done this with baby bellas, shiitakes, and chantarelles and they've all turned out great.

using my last tomatoes

The larger of my two tomato plants is reaching its limit in my yard. The fruit is really not ripening any more so I have a great deal of green tomatoes. SO I decided to try to make fried green tomatoes. I sliced a firm green tomato into roughly 1/2" rounds, dipped it in a milk and egg mixture, and dredged them in flour seasoned with salt and pepper. I pan fried them in a shallow puddle of hot canola oil until they were a nice brown and no longer really hard. Then I laid them on a plate with paper towels to soak up some of the oil.

Results: Not that exciting. I really kinda felt cheated by the flavor of these. I just really wanted them to be better. I ate them with some cholula hot sauce and that perked them up but overall, they were kinda disappointing.

Ideas: I also read about dredging them in cornmeal instead of flour. So my idea is maybe using cornmeal and some more spices would jazz them up. I am unwilling to totally give up on fried green tomatoes.

Does anyone else have any uses/ideas for green tomatoes?

Pearl couscous fruit salad

I got this recipe from a colleague of Akiko's. I've only made it once, but I think it's a winner.

Ingredients:
pearl couscous (a.k.a. Israeli couscous)
1 pomegranate
1 can mandarin orange slices
dried currants
vegetable oil

1. Split open the pomegranate and remove the seeds. I found cool directions for this on-line. As you're separating the seeds from the fibers inside the pomegranate shell, drop the seeds into a bowl of water. The fibers will float, while the seeds will sink. Then you can skim the fibers off and drain the water and you'll have mostly fiber-free seeds.

2. Make 1 cup of pearl couscous as per the directions. The stuff I had said: bring 1 and 1/4 cup water to a boil, add 1 cup couscous, simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Optionally, add a little butter when you add the couscous. I didn't add butter, but maybe I should have.

3. When the couscous is done, transfer it to a bowl and stir it until it cools off. The idea here is to keep it from glopping up. The recipe says that when it starts to cool off add a little veggie oil; this is where I think cooking it with butter or oil might have helped, because no matter what I did it still ended up kind of sticky. The good news is, it was still good.

4. Stir in the pomegranate seeds.

5. Open the can of mandarin orange slices, drain, and stir in the slices. (Of course you could use fresh tangerine slices, too, if they're in season.)

6. Stir in a handful of dried currants. (Raisins are a good substitute if you can't find dried currants, but if you can, I think the currants match the pomegranate and mandarin orange a little better.)

7. Voila. You're done.

Apple Cider Vinegar

My Vegetarian Times finally started coming again (there was a crazy address problem after we moved) and it has a tiny article on apple cider vinegar in it. Only one recipe (for salad with vinaigrette) but several general food suggestions. Since Taryn was asking about cooking with cider vinegar, I thought I'd post them.

It says and I quote: Apple cider vinegar's bright, crisp taste and more-than-a-hint-of-tart flavor work well with lentil soups, slaws, baked beans, braised cabbage, and roasted winter squash. Bean salads and cooked whole grains also take well to apple cider vinegar's tang.

Brother Momonjii's Japanese Curry, Variation #2 (Summer, again)

This is very similar to the previous one, but with a few differences.

1. Use S&B Tasty Curry sauce, medium-hot. (Japanese name is Torokeru curry, which means "melt-in-your-mouth." It's a little milder than Java.)

2. Cut up a chicken breast, a couple of yellow summer squash, and some carrots.

3. In your kettle, sautee the chicken in butter with some ground sage and thyme.

4. Add the carrots and sear.

5. Add water.

6. When the carrots are starting to get soft, add the squash and some frozen corn kernels.

7. When everything's soft, add the curry.

8. When the curry is dissolved, while you're simmering it, add lemon pepper to taste. Make sure it's salt-free lemon pepper; additional salt at this point would not be a good idea. (BTW, Spice Hunter brand Lemon Pepper is pretty awesome - like, zowie-strength lemon flavor.)

9. Add unsalted sunflower seeds, and simmer until they begin to get soft.

This one, too, is good with parmesan cheese, or with hard-boiled egg (either shredded or just cut in half).

This is, I'll admit, pretty close to Variation #1, but different enough to be worth repeating, for us at least.

PS: If you like J. curry as much as we do, it's worth making a whole box at once, even if you're only cooking for two, because, as every Japanese cook knows, it's better the second day. Something about the way the flavors seep into the ingredients overnight. In fact I think one reason so many households there have Curry Night once every other week or so is because it means you don't have to cook the next night. Bonus.

The contents of our dry goods cabinet (well, the main one). We have one of those corner cabinets with lazy susans in it, and it's a little busted. So Eric took all the stuff out to look at it but it's not fixed yet. All stacked up like that it's sucking up counter space and blocking the microwave, but it looks cool, so I took a picture, which I'm following up with my top ten dry staples.

1. basic short rice, of course. I'm lumping white and brown together as number one. It's a rare week that we don't eat this, usually several times. Plus I think it's better the next day than basmati, which gets dry really fast.
2. other rice--basmati, arborio, wild rice, jasmine. I once did a presentation for Relief Society on vegetarian cooking and food storage, and when I said I had several kinds of rice, several ladies were surprised there even were several kinds. *sigh*
3. wheat--I don't actually use the wheat, but Eric makes bread with it every couple of weeks, so I reap the benefits of his wheat usage, mostly in the form of toast.
4. quinoa--when I feel like we've eaten nothing but rice all week, I make quinoa instead. It's cute and round, so you've gotta love that.
5. pasta--I like different shapes because they fool me into thinking I'm eating different foods. Yay!
6. lentils--these are pretty much the only 'beans' I cook from their dry state because I am too lazy for other beans. Lentils usually means green lentils to me (or cute French blue ones) but I also use red lentils sometimes. I make a pretty tasty lentil salad, maybe I'll post the recipe later on.
7.peanuts, for cooking and snacking.
8. millet--I only have one recipe for this, but it's got a great, nutty flavor so I'd love to expand my millet use.
9. split mung beans (moong dal)--I also only have one recipe for these, but I also throw them into soups.
10. barley--you can cook this up like rice and put stuff on it, but I rarely do that. But I throw it in crockpot soup to add texture. It keeps its chewiness even with long cooking.

Brownie mix

I don't bake very much. Only when I can't avoid it. Recently it became unavoidable to make brownies: our local supermarket back in Somerville carried some brownies we were addicted to, and our local supermarket here doesn't have anything to compare, so we finally started looking at brownie mixes to see if anything would fill the void, since making brownies from scratch wasn't in the cards.

The upshot: we like Ghirardelli's Dark Chocolate brownie mix. Rich, even gooey, but still with a cake-like fluffiness, and a firm, almost crisp surface. And of course like the other brands it takes like two minutes to mix it up.

So there you have it.

Recipe Generator

I discovered this a few weeks ago and thought it was funny, and I just remembered it again now. It's a recipe generator with a junior high sense of humor. The recipes don't look like links, but they are.

Warning, this website contains foul language and may literally insult you. ;)

What the fuck should I make for dinner?

Vegetarian Chili

This is what we had for dinner tonight. We've had it a few times and every time it's super awesome.

ingredients:
1 tbsp canola oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
2 (15.5 oz) cans red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
2 (15.5 oz) cans fire roasted diced tomatoes
1 10 oz package frozen corn
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp dried oregano
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
1 oz semi-sweet chocolate

directions:
heat the oil in a large saucepan over med-high heat. add the garlic, onion, bell pepper, and jalapeno pepper; cook, stirring often, until veggies begin to soften (4-5 min). add the beans, tomatoes, corn, chili powder, cocoa powder, oregano, salt, and black pepper. Bring to a boil and cook, stirring often to prevent scorching, until beginning to thicken slightly, about 15 minutes. remove from heat and add the chocolate, stirring until melted.

Mattar Paneer

We made Taryn's mushroom and peas masala and it reminded us of this. And a while ago Taryn was experimenting with tofu (which we usually use instead of paneer) so we figured we'd post it for inspiration and contrast. :) This has a lot of spices, clearly, but it's not spicy.

1 large onion
1 1/2 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 bay leaf
1 clove garlic
1 15-oz can tomato sauce (the super plain kind) or crushed tomatoes
2 tap ground coriander
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp paprika
10 ounces frozen peas
3 Tbs sour cream (optional)
1/4 tsp sugar
8 ounces paneer or firm tofu, cut into bite-sized cubes

1. Puree onion and garlic in food processor
2. Heat oil in large-ish pot on medium and add oil. Add mustard seeds, cumin and bay leaf and cook about 1 minute, until they start smelling good and/or the mustard seeds start jumping.
3. Add onion and garlic and saute 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in tomato sauce and all other spices except the sugar and simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. If the sauce gets too thick add up to 1/2 cup water.
4. Stir in peas, sour cream, and sugar. Simmer 5 minutes or so until peas are hot.
5. Fold in paneer or tofu and cook 3 more minutes. Remove bay leaf and serve hot with rice or bread.


We generally use tofu because it's cheaper and easier to find around here and it still tastes fine, if not super authentic. Eric likes the sour cream in the sauce but I like it with or without.

Cuban pork chops

At least that's what the Betty Crocker cookbook I got this from says. I've made them four or five times now, and I've worked it out the way I like it. It's a good recipe.

Ingredients:
boneless pork chops (the amounts below make enough rub for five or six)
3 limes' worth of grated lime peel
1 tbsp cracked pepper
1 tbsp cumin seeds
half teaspoon salt
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp olive oil

1. Grate your lime peel. I tried it with a zester, but found it works better just to rub the limes against a cheese-grater (the smaller holes); it's much quicker than a zester, if you're going to do 3 limes. BTW, the recipe calls for 2 tbsp grated lime peel, and 3 medium limes makes more than that, but I think the more lime peel the better for this recipe.

2. Crack your pepper. The first few times I made this I cheated and used ground pepper, but now I know that the cracked pepper makes all the difference. Put your peppercorns in a ziploc bag (squeeze all the air out) and pound on them with a mallet until they're cracked. If you don't have a mallet the bottom of a saucepan or skillet will work just as well. It's tastier if you don't crack them all the way to dust - the crunch of the pepper is important.

3. Mix the pepper, lime peel, olive oil, salt, garlic, and cumin seed together.

4. Rub this mixture into both sides of your pork chops.

5. Grill or broil the pork chops until done. We don't have a barbecue grill, so we broil them in the oven; takes about 5-6 minutes per side, depending on thickness.

We served these with Taryn's Hopi corn salad and some wild rice, and it was a hit with our guests.

Mushroom rice (a.k.a. kinoko gohan)

Ingredients (makes enough for 4 people):
rice, 3 cups
dashi liquid, 540 ml
mirin, 2 tbsp
cooking sake, 3 tbsp
soy sauce 3 tbsp
mushrooms of your choice (this evening I used shiitake, maitake, lion's mane; if you can find matsutake that's the best; fresh mushrooms are better than dried, but if you use dried reconstitute them first), however much you like (I used maybe 3 handfuls tonight)
vegetable oil
green onions

1. Make the dashi: this is the bonito-based soup stock. You can find shiitake-based dashi sometimes now, which would probably be really good with this. Anyway, make 540 ml of it.

2. Wash the rice and put it in your rice cooker, then instead of filling it with water up to the 3-cup mark, use the dashi liquid. Let it sit (don't turn it on yet) while you do the next couple of steps.

3. Mix the mirin, cooking sake, and soy sauce together and put aside. If you don't cook with alcohol, you can skip the sake and buy non-alcoholic mirin.

4. Cut your mushrooms into bite-size pieces (with shiitake and other large-cap mushrooms it works best to cut them into strips, like you see with dried shiitake).

5. Sautee the mushrooms in the oil until they get tender.

6. Add the mirin/sake/soy sauce to the rice and dashi and stir.

7. Put sauteed mushrooms on top of the rice. Make sure they're submerged in the liquid, but don't mix into the rice.

8. Turn on your rice cooker and cook normally.

9. When it's done, mix the mushrooms into the rice.

10. Serve with chopped green onions to taste.

Cry for Mushroom Suggestions

Our local Harmon's sells a wide variety of fancy fresh mushrooms and I really want to try them. When I cook with mushrooms I usually use cremini/baby bellas or shiitake, but the store often has enoki, blue foot, maitake, or oyster mushrooms (as well as various fancy dried types). Has anyone used these? What are they good in? I know enoki mushrooms are used in Japanese stuff but I don't know how. I usually use mushrooms in risotto or soup, or as burrito filler (sounds crazy but it really works), but I'd like to branch out. Ideas? Experiences?

Cry for suggestions more than help

Hey everyone! I was wondering...does anyone have any awesome recipes using cider vinegar? I like cider vinegar a lot but am at a loss for really good hot dishes using it. I think cider vinegar really says fall and I was thinking it might be nice to start thinking about fall recipes. Anyways, lemme know :)

new food?

so, taryn discovered this and i thought i would share... i'm not normally a huge candy person, but these are amazing.

http://www.wonka.com/Sugar.aspx (sorry, you'll have to cut and paste the link...for some reason it's not working)

so far i've tried the clementine fruit marvels, the red apple fruit jellies and the goji berry fruit jellies. the clementine marvels are AMAZING. they also make pomegranate and white grape flavor marvels, but i haven't seen them yet. and i haven't tried the grapefruit jellies. you can, and should, go get these at walmart or target.

Poaching eggs

Oh, oh, oh: here's something I can contribute. Have you seen these? PoachPods. They're a little expensive, but we got some and they're awesome. They're incredibly easy to use, easy to clean, and make perfect poached eggs every time. (This morning, for example, we had poached eggs on toast with cream cheese and a little Pickapeppa Sauce. Mmmmmm.)

Pork chops with applesauce?

So I realize I've been contributing more questions than useful suggestions lately. I'll try to rectify that with an upcoming post. But in the meantime I want to describe what I made last night, and see if anybody has any suggestions.

So at the farmer's market we finally saw some decent corn (wet spring=not a good summer for corn in Lane County, I guess), and so we had corn on the cob and pork chops last night (and caprese salad with fresh basil, but I imagine you all know how to do that). We had some local-made blackberry applesauce in the fridge that we'd bought at the farmer's market a few weeks ago and never did much with, so I decided to make pork chops with applesauce, which I'd never done before. I searched a few recipes and didn't find one that particularly excited me (plus they mostly told you how to make applesauce, when the whole point was to use this yummy applesauce we already had).

So what I ended up doing was this: I browned the pork chops a little bit on each side, then put them in a baking dish and baked them at 350 for about 40 minutes, turning them once (this much all the recipes seemed to agree on). What I did with the applesauce was mix in a little bit of Worcestershire sauce and then just pour the mix onto the chops when I put them in the baking dish. I poured more on when I turned them.

This came out alright. Akiko said she really liked it. But I felt like it could have been improved on. Any suggestions?

I made this!

The Facebook '15 albums' meme made me want a place to make non-food posts and record recommendation-y things I might want to remember later, so I made this: http://walleyslovetheworld.blogspot.com/

Right now it's pretty much me doing what Glynne does except not as smart. And it might just stay that way forever, but if anyone ever wants to post I'll send you an invite. The title mostly says 'Walleys' 'cause I didn't want to think of anything clever and because mostly just family will probably read it and stuff.

Plus, while I'm making such a random post, I'm really glad everyone seems to be liking and using our food blog. I think it's working out really well, so thanks everyone! Someday I'll invite Mom and Dad in, I just haven't gotten around to it. Maybe I'll make it a Christmas thing.

Garam Masala Green Beans

This is one of my go-to recipes, especially good when I feel like eating real food without putting a lot of effort into it:

1 or 2 Tbs vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp brown mustard seeds
3/4 lb green beans trimmed and cut into bite-sized pieces
3/4 tsp salt
1 Tbs fresh lemon juice

1. Heat a large pan on medium-low. Add everything EXCEPT the lemon juice and add 1/4 cup of water. Cover and simmer 5 minutes, until beans are just getting tender.
2. Uncover pan and raise heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring often, 5 minutes or so until liquid evaporates. Remove from heat, stir in lemon juice, and serve.

You can use this by itself as a side dish, but if you put it on rice it makes a decent dinner for two people. And it's totally not spicy. Plus, if you like bigger veggies or don't want to chop you can just trim the green beans and cut them in half.

Mushroom and Peas Masala

I made this for the first time today as a necessary break from my now endless mountain of reading for grad school :) It turned out really really good and it was easy but challenging enough to make to be a fun event-like cooking experience.

What you need:
1 1/2 cups fresh shelled peas (you can do frozen just adjust the cooking time so they don't get gross)
2 medium onions (white or yellow. I don't think red would work so well here)
2 1/2 cups sliced or quartered white mushrooms
5-6 cloves of garlic
2 inch piece of fresh ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp coriander powder
1 tbsp garam masala (I like MGH brand the best)
5-6 little green cardamom pods
3 fresh red chilies (careful! this recipe is for MY palate, adjust for yours)
Salt to taste
2 cans of tomato paste
2 cups of water
1 tbs cooking oil (like light olive, canola, or vegetable)
2 tbs butter

TOOLS:
Deep non-stick frying pan with a lid
blender

What to do:
Prep work- Peel and quarter your onions and remove the tops of your chilies and throw them into the blender. Grind them up until they are a mushy,pasty,pink looking mess. Put them in a bowl (cover your eyes! Stinky onions!!) and set aside with a dish towel over top to preserve your eyeballs. Rinse the blender and then throw in your ginger and your peeled garlic cloves. I had trouble getting these to be pasty, they ended up more chopped. Maybe a food processor is in order (I lack one). Anyways, just make them small somehow. Set them aside. Make sure your mushrooms are cleaned and chopped and your peas are ready to go.

Cooking work- Put the oil and the butter into the pan and heat until butter is melted over a low heat. Add your cardamomos, coriander, garam masala, and cinnamon and sautee them until everything smells awesome and looks brown (don't burn anything, just make it look a nice nut brown). Add the onion and chili paste stuff and make sure your extractor fan is on or your window is open (the chilies hitting the heat can get your eyes and lungs if you aren't careful). Brown the mixture over low heat still for about 2 or 3 minutes. Add your ginger and garlic stuff and your two cans of tomato paste. Add the water and mix well. Turn the heat up to medium so it is all simmering but not ruining your stove with hot tomato splatter and add your mushrooms and peas. Stir them in, cover, and simmer until the peas are tender (about 20 min. if the peas are fresh). Stir occasionally to make sure the sauce isn't burning on the bottom. If the sauce is too runny, remove the lid and allow to thicken. Serve hot over rice :)

Bruschetta as requested

Bruschetta!!!

what you need:
2 large tomatoes
1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes
5 cloves of garlic
pinch of salt
fresh cracked black pepper
3 green onions
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
about 20 leaves of fresh basil

Chop your tomatoes into manageable chunks (don't discard any of the liquid) and slice your green onions into nice rounds. Mince the garlic, julienne your basil. Put everything into a bowl, mix well and let sit for an hour at room temp OR in the fridge over night (or during the day until dinner). Some recipes call for a little balsamic vinegar or red wine vinegar and if you are using hot house tomatoes you may want that boost of acidity. With good fresh tomatoes in season I really don't think it is necessary. Slice a loaf of crusty Italian bread into nice 1 inch slices and brush them with olive oil on one side. With the oiled side face down on a foil coated baking sheet, bake until golden brown in a 350 degree oven. In the last couple of minutes you can add a little Parmesan or mozzarella to the bread and let it get brown. I like an "Italian blend" with mozz and parm all in the mix. Kraft makes a very affordable and decent one but if you want it more tangy, got for like Sargento or something (they put asiago in theirs if I remember). Yay!! Eat bruschetta and enjoy.

*note: I did this from memory and I suggest tweaking to your own specifications
*kalamata olives might be a nice addition.....hmmm......

Question re white bean salad with pita crisps

I have a question regarding this recipe that Lorien posted a while back. We've made this twice now, and it's come out awesome both times, but I noticed that the list of ingredients calls for olive oil, while the directions don't explain how to use it. Is this for brushing on the pita before toasting them, or is it supposed to be mixed in with the salad? We've been making the salad without olive oil, and it's delicious, but I wonder if we've been making it right...

Thai Eggplant

2 Tbs vegetable oil
1/2 to 1 tsp crushed red pepper
3 baby eggplants or about 1/2 a big one, cubed into bite-sized chunks
1 medium onion, diced
1 medium bell pepper, diced
4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 Tbs rice vinegar
3 Tbs soy sauce
2 Tbs dark brown sugar
20 leaves fresh basil, shredded or torn

1. Heat large skillet or wok on med-high. Add oil and crushed pepper and let sizzle 10 to 15 seconds.
2. Add eggplant and stir-fry 2 or 3 minutes.
3. Add onion, bell pepper, and garlic and stir-fry 3 more minutes.
4. Add vinegar and soy sauce and sprinkle with sugar. Toss for 1 or 2 minutes until liquid thickens slightly.
5. Remove pan from heat and add basil. Toss to combine and serve over rice.

The red pepper flakes make it pretty spicy, so cut down or leave them out if you're not into that. Also, you might want to hold your breath when you first throw them in--they always make me cough.
You can also cheat and use dried basil--I don't measure, I just sprinkle a generous amount and it seems to work.