fried green tomatoes.

This phrase means something to Southerners I think. It's a promise of a regional dish that is rarely done exceptionally well, mostly one of those things that sounds better on paper than it ends up being in the flesh.

I have had exactly one good version of fried green tomatoes, or rather I had the same good version three or four times. South City Kitchen in Atlanta really knew what they were doing with these, serving them crisped up with a layer of soft goat cheese and a spicy.sweet red pepper coulis.

Since we're watching our upstairs' neighbor's cats, we have access to the dying embers of their rooftop summer garden, and one of the only edible things left (besides the peas) is green tomatoes. Add to that fact that catfish was on sale for €1,99 a bag and ripe avocados were 3 for €1, diner seemed preordained. I made guacamole, I fried catfish, and then I made this pretty awesome thing to go with it (well actually I made the relish first, but).

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defroster.

Above: tonight's highly, highly successful Spinach Delivery Mechanism, which involved sauteeing bacon, sage, onions, and dried mulberries (expensively subbing for raisins) then slightly wilting the spinach in that melange. Throw some pecans in there and this would certainly work as a side for catfish at some point, hold on I'm having a brainstorm, catfish coated with the spices from Damon Lee Fowler's mama's sage and onion cornbread stuffing (cornmeal, black pepper, sage, lemon zest, nutmeg, celery salt).

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I kind of feel like I've come out of the defroster, if there is such a thing. I guess there is. It was a weird week, full of bubbling energy and no emotions, I felt more like myself but simultaneously like someone I've never felt like before. I think that by now, Day Six or something, things have settled...I'm going to give it a few days of non-alcohol-related free time to see how the nights are, and of course I'm sure I'll say something about the results of that experiment here.

So what else: Homesick Texan's carrot-habanero condiment was delicious and healthy so I'll post my adaptation of it below. It's nowhere as spicy as you'd think it would be given the ingredients, and even your first taste of it sets off a bit of a panic attack ("this is where it starts?"), but the usual slow fade-in of heat never arrives, it's just pleasantly piquant. No idea why, though I read somewhere that the smaller you cut your habanero, the less spicy it is.

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salsa carote. 

1 tbsp olive oil
2 large carrots, peeled and chopped
2 medium ripe tomatoes, cut into quarters
1/4 sweet onion
3 habanero peppers, cut in half with most seeds removed
3 cloves of garlic, cut in half
Juice of one lime
2 tbsp cider vinegar
Salt to taste

So, saute the carrots in the olive oil for 5 minutes, then add the tomatoes, garlic, onion, and habaneros and cook for 5-7 minutes more. The main thing is for the carrots to be just cooked enough and for your garlic to not be burned. Then puree everything to your desired consistency. 

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poppy.

Above: Shokomonk's white chocolate with poppyseeds. Below: last night's besan-battered Moorish catfish (Spanish + Creole ideas), plus black beans, plus the last dollop of Surinamese hot sambal. It might not look like much, but for me it was a perfect plate of food, with the added bonus that finishing the last of the Surinamese sambal means it's time to try a new one.

he all growed up.

Above: Poppy's 9/11 birthday party, with both exploding and non-exploding cake.

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Used to be a time when I'd "borrow" things from my parents' cookbook library, like "permanently". Then came a time when I'd wonder why they had so few cookbooks. Now's the time when their cookbook shelves are a-heavin' again and I'm finally, just now, this year, old enough to not steal any of their shiny new books.

I'd had my eye on their copy of Steven Raichlen's Barbecue Bible for a few years now, because even though it looks horribly generic and cheap on the outside, it's actually chock full o' smart, useful recipes for just about every fucking thing you'd ever want to do on a grill. Lots and lots of interesting Indonesian and Malaysian things, a host of unusual Caribbean things, and even some Iranian and Afghani things I'd never seen or heard of before. Plus dozens of useful, accurate, authentic salads, sides, rubs, sauces, marinades, etc etc etc. I think it's a great book.

So this year I decided that I'm a big boy now, time to man up, so I bought one used on Amazon for 10 bucks. I made something nice out of it in Phoenix a few weeks ago, a coriander-grilled cod with a fresh northern Thai relish of tomatoes, basil, fish sauce, and lime, simple but great. And tonight is a non-grill adaptation, this French Antillean thing below.

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panga with french west indian caper sauce. 

4 catfish or cod or other firm white fish fillets

marinade
1/4 cup fresh lime juice
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp fresh or 1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp black pepper
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 Scotch bonnet/habanero pepper, minced

sauce
2 tbsp cilantro, chopped
2 tbsp fresh lime juice
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp EVOO
1 tbsp capers
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 1/2 tsp minced Scotch bonnet/habanero
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 large shallot, chopped

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on the beat.

When planning last month's beach trip, I ended up using TripAdvisor for a lot of things. Just now I ended up out there again and realized I'd hadn't really used it to research Amsterdam restaurants in a while.

Some surprising results for "Best-Ranked Restaurant in Amsterdam" included #1 (out of 1,528 restaurants) Zaza's, which I'd just never heard of. Situated in De Pijp, it looks like an affordable, semi-interesting American brasserie menu, though the owner is Irish. If they have seats at a bar, this might be worth looking at.

Also #2 Vlaming, which is right down the street. Mara's suggested this a few times and I've always talked her out of it because I'd never heard anything good about it and the menu looked pretty boring. It's possible I suck though. Plus the owners seem very interested in making sure people have good experiences there. How strange (UPDATE: Mara and KK went last week and had a great time, so yes I suck)

Others: we've been looking for places with decent wine lately, #157 Graves has been a due for a revisit for a while now (I don't remember my last visit's food at all, which as you can imagine is super unusual), but also #66 Cote Ouest just popped up on the radar now too, a real and affordable French place with galettes and cidre and duck and all my other favorite things, plus this looks like a good mussels/frites spot for the wintertime.

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CRON going OK. But I need some salads that can be mostly pre-made and ready to go. And they should have some protein. For example: all of these ideas are based on the lunch menu from a Chicago restaurant called Moderno.

• egg, cucumber, pumpernickel crumbs, blue cheese, tarragon
• fried catfish, peanuts, field greens, creme fraiche/ginger dressing
• arugula, crispy ham, pine nuts, pickled red onion, hirtenkase
• beets, raspberries, pistachio, mascarpone, red wine vinegar
• tuna, chopped romaine, rosemary, dried tomatoes, grilled radicchio, olives, creamy parmesan
• spinach, hard-boiled egg, pickled onion, pecorino, mushroom, black pepper vinaigrette
• smoked chicken, red apple, red pepper, mayo, pistachio, basil
• sardine, preserved lemon, fennel

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anatomy of a murder.

I've made cá kho tộ before, and it was a little too sweet for the Mara, I think there wasn't enough black pepper. This time it was pretty perfect, except that I didn't really have time to totally reduce the sauce to the stickiness everyone says it's supposed to have. But it tasted goooooooooood.

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vietnamese catfish in caramel sauce.

600gr catfish filets
6 tbsp fish sauce
4 tbsp palm sugar
4 tbsp minced shallots
4 tbsp minced garlic
1 tbsp black pepper or more to taste (very important, don't skimp)
3 tbsp caramel sauce (basically take 4 tbsp sugar and 1/2 cup water, simmer for 10 minutes, don't burn it, you'll have a little left over)
1 cup water
1 green Holland chile, thinly sliced
2 tbsp coconut oil
1 tbsp toasted coconut
4 or 5 scallions, chopped 
a little chopped cilantro

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Serve with optionally coconutted jasmine rice or definitely coconutted bulgur, which I will explain soon.

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this is how we clean the pantry.

This was highly edible, almost really super good. I'd had dried black-eyed peas sitting around for a long time so I made a very harissa- and garlic-centric hummus out of them last night. Today I tried an Israeli-style hummus-crusted fish with it, then served it with a pile of cilantro and the leftover ruby kraut from the tempeh thing.

Drizzled with sriracha, it was a totally gourmet lunch, but would've been even better with a drizzle of a tahini cream sauce and some quick beet or cucumber pickles. I must warn you, this makes a lot of hummus.

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black-eyed pea hummus with harissa.

3 cups cooked black-eyed peas
2 garlic cloves, minced
6 tbsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice
1-2 tbsp harissa
2 tbsp EV olive oil
1 or 2 tsp ground cumin
3 or 4 tbsp tahini
salt to taste
possibly water for thinning, or more olive oil

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buñuelos.

buñuelos de bagre con srirachaioli.

500gr panga/catfish filet
3 medium potatoes
3 eggs
3 cloves garlic, pressed
pinch saffron
1 onion, minced
1/2 cup celery leaves, minced
3 tbsp white port
1 to 2 tbsp smoked paprika
salt
pepper.
oil for frying

sriracha
mayonnaise

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codebreaker.

This dinner is a mystery solved. A trusted food friend brings you foodstuffs back from an exotic location, but you can't read the package. You can't even type the language to Google Translate the shit.

Closer inspection reveals that there are in fact a couple of English words, so you Google them. Eventually you manage to find out that what you are holding is a starter kit for making hoba miso, from Takayama, Japan. Here's Wikipedia Japan's article, Translated.

This is hoba miso with catfish in place of the usual beef and/or mushrooms (I know, it looks like tofu). It was really really good, we were licking the magnolia leaf at the end, but it's quite unphotogenic, no? Apparently it can be made to look better.

Basically: I pan-fried the catfish in butter and sesame oil for 3-4 minutes per side, with a tiny bit of salt and raw sugar added at some point in the cooking process. Then I rigged up a fake hibachi (grill pan with foil on top), slathered the magnolia leaf with miso, placed it on the fauxbachi, added the fish and scallions, and waited 10 minutes or so (over low heat) until the miso was bubbling and starting to caramelize. Serve. 

summer's kiss.

Procrastination afoot. And thus, blogging afoot. But we are fighting valiantly against our baser instincts, mostly b/c we really do have things to be doing.

So, may I present some efficiently-delivered brief notes from the last week of eating:

1) Went to La Perla again, ordered the same food, it was just as good as the first time, kind of unsurprisingly, which was, yes, a surprise.

2) Went to the beach for the first time this year: it was pretty good except for the sunburn, a beach tradition in which I do not normally participate.

3) Surinamese food makes me so consistently happy that I'm forced to wonder why I don't make it more often. It's so reliable in terms of dopamine delivery.

The latest reminder was: a full take-out meal from Riaz on Bilderdijkstraat for the first time in years, and it was...above average. We didn't order a ton of food, but what we did order was interesting and distinctive. Service was friendly if a bit slow and exhausted-seeming, and the prices were pretty reasonable.

Pictured below is my herheri with bakkeljauw, herheri being a mild stew of ripe and unripe plantains, sweet potato, and cassava, enlivened by the presence of spicy salt cod, homemade pickles, and a sambal or two. Unique flavors, and the whole thing felt more healthy than not. We also tried the jarabaka, a kind of dryish catfish masala with rice (jarabaka = pangasius), also good if carefully straddling the too-salty line. Baras were fine but not as good as Hangalampoe, IMHO.

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ca kho to.

Ja. Making ca kho to tomorrow (though the recipe for the caramel sauce is a bit better here), to serve with the rest of that mushroom soup that just keeps getting better.

I didn't do any of this. Mara made great fish cakes, with lots of scallions and celery in the cakes and a great tartar sauce.

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east coast fish cakes.

bag o panga
celery stalks
bunch o scallions
bread crumbs
egg
old bay

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old bay seasoning.

paprika
black peppercorns
mustard seeds
dried basil
cardamom
cinnamon
dried ginger
cloves
salt
bay leaves

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tartar sauce.

mayo
mustard
capers chopped
pickles chopped
salt and pepper

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steve the laser mouse.

Oh, look.

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Mara is cooking tonight, and this makes me happy...it feels like a long time since we've cooked dinner specifically for each other.

I was just reading something random this weekend about the process of deciding what's for dinner, and it made me realize that many, many food bloggers linger on this step when posting a recipe.

But why? Is it just like any other creative activity that you might document, so you give a little back story on your thought process? I don't know, I'm not so sure there's not more to it, something pleasure-related in the recounting of how you decided what to eat, that whole dopamine/anticipation thing. Research this, will you?

Regardless. Tonight we had fish defrosting and we wanted something comforting. To me, fish and comfort do not necessarily belong in the same sentence unless possibly it's a sentence about something other than food, but there's this one thing Mara makes that we both seemed to be gravitating towards: she does some kind of stuffed fish a couple of times a year, and it's always good, but we never write it down, so this is tonight's attempt. It contains the controversial fish and cheese combo, a controversy that I don't totally understand because they always seem to taste pretty darn good together. Maybe more cheese = more comfort.

I filed this under Southern Cooking because it reminds me of something you'd see in a Louisiana kitchen (kidding, more like this or this), maybe even a Louisianan Italian one, except they'd probably use cream cheese somewhere, and pecans instead of pine nuts, and scallions somewhere, and of course there'd have to be shrimp or crab in the stuffing or on top...all of which sounds pretty good.

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baked fish stuffed with spinach, pine nuts, and raisins. 

4 tbsp butter
4 fillets of catfish, tilapia, cod, etc.
a bag of fresh spinach, WASHED (ahem)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp olive oil
3/4 cup or less pine nuts, toasted
3/4 cup or less raisins
1 tbsp Cajun seasoning (or substitute, say...cayenne, garlic powder, onion powder, and thyme)
1/4 cup or more Gouda, shredded
salt
pepper

Melt butter in small saucepan, add raisins, let sit, possibly transferring to a smaller bowl if butter does not cover raisins. Your goal is plump raisins.

Butter a baking dish. Saute spinach and garlic in oil with salt and pepper to taste. Add the butter-soaked raisins (reserving the butter), the cheese, and the pine nuts to the spinach. Stir to combine.

Roll the spinach mixture up in the fish fillets. Pour the reserved butter over the fillets and sprinkle with cajun seasoning. Bake for 20 minutes at 200C.

bitten.

I mentioned "my cookbook" of brazenly stolen recipes already, didn't I. Here are a couple of catfish stylings from it, I don't think I've tried either of these before but they look like they could work with some tweaking.This first one needs to be scaled down and tested for sure, and the second one just needs to be rewritten. 

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pan-sautéed catfish with parsley-pecan sauce.

2 cups cornmeal, polenta, etc.
1 tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon salt
6 catfish fillets, about 6 ounces each
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 cups parsley-pecan sauce

2 cups tightly packed fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves and tender stems only
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup broken pecan meats
1 large clove garlic, chopped
1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup freshly grated romano cheese
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Directions: Mix cornmeal, cayenne pepper and salt. Spread on large platter and dredge each fillet, shaking off excess. Set aside on sheet of waxed paper. Heat half the oil and butter in a skillet large enough to accommodate 3 fillets. When butter is foaming but not brown, add fillets and sauté on one side for about 4 minutes, until light golden. Turn fillets and spread the browned side with sauce; continue to sauté until underside is browned, about another 4 minutes. Cover skillet for a few minutes to melt sauce. Remove fish to platter. Add remaining oil and butter and cook remaining fillets.
Sauce: Place parsley in food processor and process until coarsely chopped, turning machine off and on and scraping down sides. Add all other ingredients except salt, and process until mixture makes a smooth paste. Store, tightly covered in refrigerator. Makes about 2 cups.
6 servings.

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pud ped pla duk.

a few catfish filets
1/2 cup thai eggplant (small round green eggplants)
6-10 cloves garlic, crushed, chopped or mashed
2 stalks lemon grass (about 2-3" long), bruised
1/4 cup very thinly sliced ginger
1/2 cup sweet basil, chopped
1/4 cup fish sauce
1 tablespoon palm sugar
sliced green chilies

Combine the sauce ingredients. In a wok get enough oil to shallow fry the fish smoking hot. Add the fish and stir until thoroughly coated with oil, then add the prepared sauce. Stir fry for about 2-3 minutes, ensuring the fish doesn't stick to the pan and the pieces are all thoroughly sauced. Remove to a serving dish and serve with steamed jasmine rice.

thinking triple x.

Brief notes on this rainy Monday:

1) Blogger continues to be one of the most annoying pieces of software written this century. iTunes is still solidly in 1st place.

2) Stevia is proving useful in coffee and homemade pickles, otherwise jury remains out. I really wish it worked like sugar in desserts, but yeah, it doesn't: here's a useful writeup of some stevia dos and don'ts .

3) Budget peach-ripening plan worked, all it took was one night wrapped in a linen tea towel on the counter.

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peach, habanero, mint salsa.

2 firm but ripe peaches, diced

1 cup diced tomato

1/2 cup sweet onion, chopped

1 to 2 tsp habanero/adjoema/Madame Jeanette, minced

juice of two limes

1 tbsp fresh mint, minced

1 tbsp cilantro, minced

salt to taste

This is good enough to eat by itself (that's one reason there's so much of it), but last night we served it on almond-crusted catfish with thyme, allspice, nutmeg, and black pepper. Tasted great, cooking process was a bit fucked. Need to check on how one is supposed to do a pure nut crust without burning the shit out of it. Don't think I didn't notice the phrase "pure nut crust".

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outdoorsy-type.

Mara's strawberry-rhubarb cone from Lanskroon. My habanero-basil pico de gallo for tonight's almond-crusted catfish, also w/red cabbage + tahini + special guest chipotle slaw. Pretty darn good for diet food.

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habanero-basil pico de gallo.

2 ripe tomatoes, diced
1/2 cup sweet onion, diced
1 scallion, chopped fine
1 tbsp fresh basil leaves, chopped fine
1 to 2 tsp fresh habanero chile, minced
juice of two limes
plenty of salt

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stormy monday.

I keep thinking about the octopus. Is he satisfied?

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So, Scrabble yesterday...my play was satisfyingly (full disclosure: my opponent is probably reading this, so I must season my words with an extra dash of diplomacy) "insurmountable", and the food was...eh, fine.

I did what I said I was going to, the pork belly with cumin, fennel, and orange; zucchini with feta, pine nuts, and mint (tahini-buttermilk thing on the side); catfish in cumin and cardamom butter plus mango salsa.

Though it was all quick and relatively inexpensive, I don't think I'd repeat any of it exactly that way again, especially not the pork belly: not enough sweetness for me (maybe that's what the quinces were for in the original recipe? Duh....) And yeah, the spices weren't pronounced enough in the butter, leaving the catfish totally "pleasant" (it was fish sauteed in butter, I mean come on) but highly unspectacular.

In fact, I think the only bit of the afternoon's effort worth keeping was the mango salsa, which I know doesn't sound thrilling, but try to look past the generic name...it's easy and goooood.

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mango salsa.

1 just under-ripe mango, cubed

juice of 1 lime

1/2 cup sweet onion, diced

1/8 cup roasted red pepper, rinsed, dried, and diced finely

salt to taste

1/4 cup cilantro and/or mint, chopped fine

Hmm...combine? I made mine in the morning and kept it chilled all day so the flavors could blend and the salsa would be nicely chilled. If you do this, don't add the herb(s) until you're ready to serve. As you can see, in this instance I added my herbs to the fish instead. I am a fucking madman sometimes.

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hup me.

You know what? There's a reason that the streets aren't overflowing with pickled watermelon rind. I sat down in front of the TV before bed last night, not because this is a normal ritual or anything but because I'm sleeping on the couch for hotness reasons, and I thought maybe I'd take on a nice relaxing mindless task to subdue my normally restless bedtime mind.

The "unprocessed" watermelon rinds in my fridge were taking up a lot of room, so I said, even possibly out loud (I guess maybe addressing the cats? Not good.), "Hey, let's get those dang ol'-timey pickles started," or something similar, and then assembled a bowl, two vegetable peelers, a sharp knife, and my rinds.

Right, and Jade. In the last couple of evenings before bed I've been trying to watch it on Hulu, primarily because it's free, but also because it seems to be doing a wonderful job of putting me to sleep. I really haven't been able to watch more than 15 minutes at a time, which is an unusual distinction for a non-subtitled film.

There's only one issue so far, which is some kind of (hopefully) horrific scene near the end of the film that involves lots of bloodcurdling screams and screechy violins. This tends to wake me up, but after the first time it happened (during which I assumed that the screams were coming from one of the inhabitants of my apartment), I seem to have learned that "It's just Jade", and then I roll over and go back to sleep.

It's not a good movie in the traditional sense of the word "good", but of course this is why I'm watching it. It's not just a bad movie, but a bad movie made by experts in bad moviemaking such as Joe Eszterhas (Showgirls, Basic Instinct), Chazz Palminteri, and the amazing David Caruso. Plus it's a noir, and well I love to see good ones or bad ones. But also: a then-35-year-old Linda Fiorentino is in it, and I defy you to find a man my age who wouldn't think that's a good thing.

Watermelon rind. My point. I sat down expecting some mind-numbing but productive task a la cleaning green beans, shelling peas, husking corn, pitting cherries, etc. What I got instead was something far more epic, a fight to the death between human and fruit. I lost. After fifteen minutes of increasingly agitated attacks by me, all ending with the watermelon remaining totally unscathed, I said "fuck that", viciously stabbed the watermelon one more time and then painfully stepped on a vegetable peeler that had fallen by the wayside. Mindless? Yes. Relaxing? Less so.

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I could whine some more about the heat, but really, who wants to hear it. I will say that I went for a two-hour bike ride to cool off today, and yes, that was a great idea by me, much better with a manufactured breeze. And now there are just the faintest stirrings of a real breeze coming through my windows so I imagine general relief is on the horizon.

Got a manly dinner/Scrabble/World Cup date tomorrow. Will probably do catfish in Ethiopian butter with a tart cayenne-mango salsa, and a yellow zucchini thing with a little shoarmaspice, feta, mint and that tahini-sriracha-buttermilk stuff. I also have a little pork belly sitting around, now what should I do with that, some kind of little appetizery thing. Tell me. Teach me.*

I was thinking about this, minus the quinces.

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* Back when we had our record store (ha moop), we used to get the cutest handwritten faxes from a very sweet old Japanese man named Tomonori. His manner of asking us about our new releases was, "Teach me about any new releases! Teach me!!!"

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pork belly rub.

2 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
1/2 tsp powdered bay leaf
finely grated zest of a large orange

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bringie me banana.

New guest-appropriate grilled fish dish discovered tonight. Don't really know what it's called yet. It's essentially bali burgers crossed with Mara's old sate lilit recipe and wrapped in banana leaves instead of being skewered.

This was my first time cooking with the leaf of the banana (I know!), and really, they're great. Immediately two big fish-grilling problems are solved: one, there's no potential for sticking, which I don't care about so much if it's just the two of us, but if people are coming over it's nice to serve them something that doesn't look like it came out of a tumbledryer. And two, there's a vastly reduced potential for charring-beyond-recognition something with sugar in it.

If that weren't enough, it's also a way to use Cheap Dirk Fish for a dinner that seems fancy as all get-out.

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ikan something.

A two-inch knob of ginger, peeled

A four-inch piece of turmeric, peeled

the useful part of 1 lemongrass stalk
10 good-sized shallots

10 candlenuts

6 cloves of garlic

5 red Holland chiles

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tomato

1 tsp belacan/shrimp paste

3 tbsp peanut oil

1 tsp salt, or more to taste (i used more than 1 tsp, but not sure how much...we test again soon)

2 tbsp light brown, thin tamarind paste (maybe half that if you've got the thick, almost-black concentrate)

2 tbsp palm sugar

10 tbsp flaked unsweetened coconut

100ml coconut milk

5 green Thai chiles, minced (this is what the original recipe called for, we didn't do it, we will next time)

10 kaffir lime leaves, snipped into very thin slivers

1 kg catfish filets

Process first 12 ingredients in food processor until paste-like. Saute paste over medium-low heat, stirring often, for 10-15 minutes or until harsh taste is gone. Add tamarind and sugar, remove from heat and let cool. When cool, add coconut, coconut milk, like leaves, and fish, and stir to combine thoroughly. At this point I fried up one tiny bite's worth of the mixture so I could taste it and adjust the seasoning.

Ideally let the fish/paste mix sit for a couple of hours. Then make banana leaf parcels out of it. Grill for 10 minutes per side over a medium-hot fire. I ended up having them on the grill for almost 30 minutes with no discernible ill effects. This recipe makes 8 packets. Serve with sambal.

reduce!

I'm talking about several things here, but mostly I'm talking about ambition. We got up very late today. Last night found Mara entertaining Matt/Lucy/Maya and a random stream of housemates with her maiden puttanesca voyage, and then after midnight bringing the augmented leftovers to the doorbell-ringing Jazzcafe hordes below; across town I was playing eight straight hours of Risk with two other vastly more experienced

dorks
gentlemen (TWO TIMES was I literally one roll away from a shocking underdog victory, both at midnight and at 1:30am or so. But I faltered, was surrounded, and shortly thereafter all was lost. Fucking Egypt).

So after getting up at noon, we both thought, "Hey...let's just take it easy today (kind of an inside joke) and make a nice dinner later".

Sounds great. So we dug around to see what needed using and kind of only came up with frozen banana leaves. But the direction was obvious: "Let's do bali burgers! Wrapped in banana leaves! Yes!" How times change: when we first tasted this recipe we hadn't heard of half the ingredients. Now we had almost everything in our cupboards or freezer already, minus lemongrass and fish.

Fast forward 3 hours. Sun. Hotness. "Ehhh. Do you really feel like doing all that?" "Ehhh. No." And so, behold the "Blackened" Catfish Salad (this refers to seasoning only: when it comes to cosmetics I am a blackening skeptic) with feta and a not-yet-poured "Creole Mustard Vinaigrette", I kid you not:

Unpromising looks aside, it tasted exactly like something you'd get at Applebee's, which is not an effect I usually strive for, but it was kind of comforting. I mean, I got the recipe from the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce, so really what did I expect.

ceylon down the line.

Say what you will about his solo career, but Lionel Richie had some legendary moments with The Commodores.

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Seems like we have a lot to catch up on, you and I, but...maybe not. Let's see, Friday Mara and I made an extra big batch of jalfrezi sauce, with the idea being that I would use this as a component for the dinners I was serving on Saturday and Sunday. It's a great recipe, the most important tips being: if your final results don't taste right, it's either 1) not cooked long enough 2) not salted properly or 3) not buttery enough.

For Saturday I geeked out a little bit and made what I thought was going to be an "extra" curry, the Sri Lankan coconut thingie. Basically fried catfish in a coconut milk sauce featuring roasted coconut, cardamom, cinnamon, clove, and something else (beginning stages pictured above). But then two unexpected dinner guests showed up and the "extra" curry wasn't so extra anymore. I didn't even snag a picture of it before it got gone.

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Sunday I went to brunch. I don't think I've ever typed that sentence on this blog before. But it's true, that's what I did. The highlights for me were sweet potato biscuits, grits, and a deadly cranberry cake with a brandy-butter sauce.

Then I came home and kind of re-made Saturday night's dinner, but with pork subbing for the paneer. And instead of a Sri Lankan curry I did these roasted caulifower vada or pakora or bonda or pakoda or bhaji or something like that. Here it is with its two Thoroughly Repeatable friends, the tamarind-raisin chutney and a coriander-mint-yogurt chutney.

And here's the pork jalfrezi.

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tamarind chutney.

2 tbsp tamarind concentrate

1 cup hot water

1/2 cup raisins

1/4 cup palm sugar

2 fennel seeds, crushed

1/2 tsp cumin

Combine, and simmer for quite some time, maybe 45 minutes.

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