with Mary Anne Mohanraj
GIVEAWAY! 12 DAYS TO LAUNCH, and we’re launching daily giveaways for these two weeks! Congratulations to yesterday’s winners: Amalia Veronika, Anna Guevarra, and Lenore Jean Jones!
Today’s question for the comments: Is a samosa a sandwich? Yes / No / Discuss!
Bonus question: What would make for a fabulous South Asian sandwich? (No extra points for answering it, but thought it would be fun….)
*****
Every day, I’ll be giving away three (3!) gorgeous eBooks of Feast, perfect for referring to while cooking, using a tablet stand in the kitchen, or just browsing curled up on the couch. ($24.99 value!)
So that’s 42 chances to win! 42, the perfect number, the answer to life, the universe, and everything. How could you not enter? And if you already have a copy, think what a lovely and unique gift it would make…
(You can only win once in this two-week period, but we encourage you to keep answering questions and joining in the fun regardless. 🙂 )
I’ll post at 8 a.m. (generally — later today, as I was hosting an event, sorry!), and you just have to comment on the post by midnight CST to be entered to win. I will try to make it slightly fun, if I can, by coming up with a prompt, although if you really can’t think of anything relevant, you can just comment something random, and you’ll still be entered. 🙂
(If you feel motivated to share, I’ll be grateful. Right now, it’s all about building visibility for the cookbook; people can’t buy it if they don’t know it exists…)
Stephanie will be tracking, and will randomly pick and announce the 3 winners the following day.
Chicago gamer (and eating) folks, please save-the-date for a launch party at the new Cards Against Humanity gaming cafe (1965 N. Milwaukee Avenue). We’d going to do a launch event there for Feast! Thursday, April 2, 4-7 p.m., South Asian-themed board games (I’m going to bring my big carrom board!), and I’ll provide delicious treats.
It’s going to be capped to around 50 (maybe a bit more with staggered entry), so watch this space for details. Well, watch my wall generally. 
Free to enter, but you’ll need a ticket. Books for sale, of course!
(Hm, we’re going to use their ticketing system, so I think the actual plan will be something like I post to my people first (my newsletter, Patreon, FB), letting them have first dibs to grab tickets, and then Cards announces it more widely. I’ll have to confirm that that’s okay with them.)
Date night this week was date lunch on Thursday, and we were both harried and only had 45 minutes to spare. But we pulled French bread pizza out of the freezer box and lay in bed and talked about book production plans and ate together and it was better than not eating together, so we’ll call it in a win.
Kevin asked how it tasted — we haven’t bought these in a long time, but somehow he decided to try them again. I told him: “Good — tastes like college.” We can both make much better pizza now, but there’s something to be said for tradition. 🙂
Packed up the first set of Neapolitan chocolates for the Patreon subscription boxes. (Stephanie is working on setting up Shopify for me, so hopefully we’ll soon have that as an option too.)
I need to get a flat-rate small shipping box from the basement and figure out just how much stuff I can fit in there. I’m thinking at least 2 sets of sweets should fit, maybe 3? Plus some little bath salts & a sampler of curry powder, a few Feast postcards, and maybe a handmade botanical bookmark?
I may be slightly over-ambitious here. 🙂 If these go well, at some point, I may have to add a medium box option, just to satisfy my desire to pack things stuffed with PRESENTS.
Dessert bar! Everyone had two crepes — my first was mango with chocolate chips topped with lightly-sweetened whipped cream. If I’d had a little more energy, I would have made a chocolate sauce instead of just throwing out bowls of chips, but we were getting a little tired with the food prep at that point! Chips were fine. We’ll call it an contrasting textural element.
Second was my absolute favorite dessert crepe — fresh lemon juice and sugar. It doesn’t really get more perfect than that.
The kids went nuts with the Nutella! With plenty of strawberries, mango, chocolate chips and whipped cream to accompany.
The kids liked the sushi bar we did for Sunday dinner so much, I decided to do a crepe bar this time. (Sunday dinner ended up on Tuesday due to scheduling chaos, but same basic concept — kids help with cooking dinner, learning cooking in the process, and we have a leisurely meal together.)
Kavi pretty much has pancakes down, so I figured she’d have no trouble with crepes. I was right. By the third crepe, she was making them perfectly. (Mir Mo Ga and Sharms, we should remember that we can reliably add her to the mutton roll assembly line for family events now.)
Anand was offered the option of crepe-making, but he’s still a little nervous about the stove, so not this time. Hopefully later. He does okay with the waffle maker, so it’s not so far off, I think.
They both did fine with whipping cream — the plan was to do both savory and sweet crepes. I gave the kids the option of whipping the cream by hand, which Roshani once did when we were having a picnic at the park, but somehow, neither of them was enthusiastic about that possibility… 🙂 Roshani is hard-core.
Since we were doing crepes, I decided to make the table setting rather fancy. You really can’t go wrong with mixing creams and whites and silvers and golds and taupes — it makes inexpensive components look sophisticated and elegant when they come together. The gold-toned utensils were from Target, I think, and the white paisley-patterned plates from Pier 1. Love these napkin rings that look like twisting branches (or antlers?).
I also asked Alexa to play ‘French music.’ Her choices were a little odd, but okay. Nice for a change!
Our main plan for the crepes was to fill them with chicken, sautéed onion & mushrooms (which I had leftover from breakfast prep earlier in the week), asparagus, Swiss cheese, and a sherried shallot cream sauce. (This was my week to pick Sunday dinner, and this is my favorite flavor combination for savory crepes. I loves it.)
We did prep some things in advance, so the kids didn’t get tired or impatient with too much cooking just before eating.
• the mushrooms were already ready and just needed heating
• Kev and Anand made the crepe batter much earlier in the day (the recipe also wanted it to rest for at least an hour, which isn’t essential, but you know, can’t hurt)
• Kevin cut up and sautéed the chicken thighs in a little olive oil
• Kevin and Anand also prepped the asparagus, tossed it in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted it in the toaster oven.
Kavi and I did the actual crepe making, but before that, we made a simple cream sauce. We started with the fond of the chicken left in the pan Kevin had used, added chopped shallot and oil, sautéed until translucent. Added a little cooking sherry and cooked that off for additional flavor (Kavi was scandalized that we were cooking with alcohol!)
Then added maybe a 1/2 t. of flour and fried that for a few seconds, until it changed color, and then poured in a cup or so of cream. Maybe a bit more. Season with salt (1/2 t.?) and pepper, and stir on medium, until it comes together into a nice sauce, which should only take a few minutes. (You could add a bit of lemon juice at this point, which would be delicious — stir well if doing so, so it doesn’t curdle, and don’t have the heat up too high.)
Then it was just a matter of heating up anything that had gotten a little too cold (hooray for microwaves, making this much simpler than in the old days), and sitting down to eat. The kids mostly stuck to the chicken and crepes, though Anand is experimental and did take bites of other things. They had some asparagus, though they don’t like it as much as Kevin and I. We probably should have chopped it up, so it would’ve been easier to fill a crepe with! But keeping some long does make for a fancy presentation.
I’m not sure I convinced the kids that it was actually easier to eat this kind of filled crepe with knife and fork — they really wanted to just wrap things up in crepes and stuff them in their mouths. Well, dessert was coming. (Preview shot of Anand there, with much Nutella.)
Dried peaches and pineapple, dipped in dark chocolate, sprinkled with powdered dehydrated raspberry. Plus one dried apricot dipped in white chocolate. 🙂
I may have been pushing the capacity of this pot slightly beyond recommended bounds. The pretty photos are a lie; this is not a great recipe, sadly — I was trying a fairly random albondigas soup recipe I found online, and the flavor was sadly lacking. We ate it, and I suppose points for the kids being willing to try something new for dinner, but I was disappointed. It really makes me cranky to eat mediocre food!
GIVEAWAY! 13 DAYS TO LAUNCH, and we’re launching daily giveaways for these two weeks! Congratulations to yesterday’s winners: Amanda Emily Smith, Kishani Moreno, and Deborah A Cunefare!
Today’s question for the comments: In a cage match fight to the death, what would win, biryani or tacos? (Feel free to suggest other contenders & match-ups.)
Remember, you have to go to my Facebook wall to enter!
(Question taken from yesterday’s deserted island question, where both were strong contenders.) Bonus points (imaginary) awarded for defending your answer.
*****
Every day, I’ll be giving away three (3!) gorgeous eBooks of Feast, perfect for referring to while cooking, using a tablet stand in the kitchen, or just browsing curled up on the couch. ($24.99 value!)
So that’s 42 chances to win! 42, the perfect number, the answer to life, the universe, and everything. How could you not enter? And if you already have a copy, think what a lovely and unique gift it would make…
(You can only win once in this two-week period, but we encourage you to keep answering questions and joining in the fun regardless. )
I’ll post at 8 a.m., and you just have to comment on the post by midnight CST to be entered to win. I will try to make it slightly fun, if I can, by coming up with a prompt, although if you really can’t think of anything relevant, you can just comment something random, and you’ll still be entered.
Head over to Facebook to enter!
(If you feel motivated to share, I’ll be grateful. Right now, it’s all about building visibility for the cookbook; people can’t buy it if they don’t know it exists…)
Stephanie will be tracking, and will randomly pick and announce the 3 winners the following day.