I Got to Use a Flamethrower

Kevin made creme brûlée for Kavi’s French-themed birthday, and Kavi got to try torching for the first time.

She excitedly texted her friends afterwards: “I got to use a flamethrower!” 

Plants + Food = Joy

The FB group I started for the local garden club has been wildly successful, up to almost 2000 happy members in just a few years. So, y’know, I decided to try starting a sister cooking club. Plants + food = joy.

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This group was started as a sister group to the Garden Club of Oak Park-River Forest; all lovers of cooking are welcome to join, including neighbors from Chicago and nearby suburbs. Beginners welcome, and you don’t need to have be a good cook to join us!

Some of the things you could use this group for: recipe recommendations, requests for cooking advice, sharing a dish you’re proud of, asking where to find specialty ingredients, loaning out / borrowing specialty cookware, recommending good podcasts or TV shows about cooking….etc!

NOTE: This is an open public group, and will remain so, which means people outside the group can view your posts.

NOTE 2: If you have an ad for a cooking-related business, please post no more than once / month; we recommend on the 15th. Thanks!

Join us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/588119708722159/

Birthday Lunch Crepes

Birthday lunch crepes! In addition to the chicken filling and the apple filling, we put out lemons and sugar, plus Nutella. I would’ve sliced some bananas to go with the Nutella, but we didn’t have those on hand. Oh well!

I was very happy with first a chicken-and-Emmenthaler crepe, then apples-and-Emmenthaler, then finishing with a perfect lemon-sugar. Kevin and Kavi did similarly, but Anand — oh, Anand is our experimental cook. He did one crepe with Nutella and apples and Emmenthaler (he LOVES cheese), which is reasonable enough. But then he did one with Nutella and sautéed chicken and Emmenthaler.

I mean, a chocolate molé sauce is great on chicken, so he’s not SO far off adding Nutella, I guess? But I don’t think I’d do it. Anand did conclude that he would’ve liked that one better without the chicken. 

We Went with Crepes

For Kavi’s birthday trip-to-France-themed lunch, we went with crepes. I love a crepe selection, personally, and when we did it for Sunday dinner, the kids had a lot of fun deciding what they wanted in their crepes. Normally I’d do a spinach-feta filling (sauté onions and garlic in olive oil, add chopped spinach (thawed from frozen works great, if you squeeze out the extra moisture), salt and pepper, stir in the feta), but we were out of spinach AND feta. Oh well. 

I did a chicken filling instead. Sauté 1 chopped onion in a few T butter, stirring ’til golden, add bite-size pieces of chicken thighs, 5-6 thighs (I could have cut it a little smaller, but was in a bit of a rush, and this worked fine), 1 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. fresh ground pepper. Sauté until chicken is browned and cooked through, then add 1/4 c. heavy cream and simmer until well-blended and the cream has thickened into a sauce. Mmm…

Kevin diced up some apples and we sautéed those in butter too (separate pan), adding a teaspoon of cinnamon and a pinch of salt. Both of those go well with Swiss cheese, if you feel like adding that — we used Emmenthaler, because we had some on hand, and it was delicious.

#kaviturns13

All About Food Around Here

It’s all about the food around here. For Kavi’s birthday party-day dinner, we went with unicorns — Annie’s mac-and-cheese unicorn-themed pasta. Not the fanciest dinner, but she was delighted, and we were pretty tired, so grateful for an easy meal. (I had leftover rice and curry myself.)

I set up the dining table for her actual birthday, clearing off all the sewing stuff. I used the checkered tablecloth (symbol of France, but will also hopefully be useful for picnics in the park / woods once the weather gets a little less wet, so I bought a good quality one for us to use, and I quite like it — it’s twice this size, I have it doubled up in the pic), and managed to salvage enough of the flowers despite their use as a balloon swatting device to make a cute little vase.

 

Kavi went for her standard cereal for breakfast — if I’d been more organized, I’d have had a few chocolate croissants on hand, but she seemed happy enough with this. And mid-morning, I cut up two mangoes for the kids, because cutting fruit for people = love.

#kaviturns13

Sri Lankan Curried Cod

Sri Lankan Curried Cod

(25 minutes, serves 4)

This is a simple curry rich with coconut milk and green chili, appropriate for any whitefish. Cod is lovely in this, but you could also use tilapia, bass, grouper, haddock, catfish, snapper — mildly flavored, quick-cooking fish that usually aren’t too expensive.

A great weeknight meal, and feel free to double the recipe for leftovers in the next few days; this will also freeze well for a rainy day; rice freezes well too, in a Ziplock with the air pressed out, so you could portion this out into meals and freeze. Add a little moisture to rice when reheating in the microwave.

INGREDIENTS:

2 lbs cod or other whitefish

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2-3 onions, chopped

1-2 T fresh ginger, chopped

5 cloves garlic, chopped

2 finger hot green chilies, chopped (adjust up or down as desired for heat)

1 TBL mustard seed

1 TBL cumin seed

1 tsp fenugreek / methi seed

Pinch of saffron threads

6-12 curry leaves, optional

1 tsp salt

2 cups coconut milk

Juice of one lime

NOTE: If making rice, start it first; it’ll be ready by the time you finish the curry.

1. Wash fish and dry on paper towels. Cut into roughly 1 inch pieces.

2. Sauté onions, ginger, and garlic on medium-high with spices, curry leaves, and salt until golden-translucent, stirring as needed.

3. Add coconut milk. Simmer for about 5-10 minutes, until well blended. Add lime juice, stirring so it doesn’t curdle.

4. Add fish and simmer an additional 5-10 minutes, until fish is cooked through, stirring occasionally. Taste and adjust seasonings as desired. Serve with rice; also nice with string hoppers, dosai or roti, or in a bowl with kale sambol.

Mother’s Day Request

My main request for Mother’s Day was that I not have to think about feeding anyone. The kids took care of breakfast, I had seeni sambol buns for lunch and have no idea what the rest of them ate, and Kevin made us this lovely Sunday dinner. I particularly liked the chard with cherries — YUM. I’d give you a recipe, but I have no idea what he did.

The first two photos are Kavi not in a mood to be photographed and hiding behind her brother. She was willing later, though, as she practiced carving the roast. 

Weekend Cook-a-longs for Feast

So, I attended Pooja Makhijani‘s bake-a-long last weekend for the star bread, and it was fun and helpful. I think I know how to structure doing one now — would people like it if I started doing weekend cook-a-longs for recipes from Feast? The basic idea:

– I post that I’m doing it (with date / time / recipe)

– the first 20 people who commit to joining get in

– I send them a Zoom invite

– we cook together with me talking through the recipe, answering questions

Thoughts? Requests for recipes to do early? (Hoppers would be on the list, but probably I’d want to do a few before trying that one.)

Passionfruit Moscow Mule Recipe

Kevin handed in his grading, and I have about an hour left to do tomorrow, I think, so I’ve started the summer cocktail experiments. Woot!

(This is where I pause and reassure my dad that I am still very much a lightweight and hardly drink at all, he doesn’t need to worry. I will nurse one drink like this for an hour, and most weeks, don’t have any alcohol at all. Okay, onwards.)

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Passionfruit Moscow Mule

(makes two servings)

4 ounces vodka — I used grapefruit & rose, mostly because it was just SO PRETTY, yes, Ketel One, you got me

1/2 cup passion fruit pulp

2 tsp lime juice

8 ounces ginger beer

fresh lime to garnish

I would say that this is tasty, but only if you like sour. Between the grapefruit vodka, the passion fruit, and the lime juice, you have three kinds of sour going here. If I were making it again, I’d rim the glass with jaggery sugar, for sure.

Kev and I were talking about how this compares to a whiskey sour (which is often my bar drink of choice; I’m a girl who loves the tang), and he said that whiskey has more complex flavors for the sour to play against, so it works better. I think that’s probably right — this cocktail is fine, but I wouldn’t say it’s really interesting, as it stands? Will have to think about how I’d want to tweak it.

Side note: I do have a particularly sour batch of passionfruit puree on hand right now, so that may be affecting my assessment slightly. Fresh passionfruit is often more sweet than this. So maybe just adding in a little sugar would address it. I’d also like to make it with some fresh passionfruit, because all the little seeds would look cool in the drink. So expect to see another variation on this sometime, whenever I can get my hands on fresh passionfruit. (Pete’s sometimes carries it…)