We should have a "What are you cooking?" thread. Now we do.

[davent]

India night, no better leftovers then curries.

A recipe my wife's made many times including tonight, Butter Chicken, and a new recipe for me, Baked Vegetables in Curried Coconut Milk. For vegetables used onions, carrots, parsnip, sweet potatoes and cauliflower. Curry spices were coriander, cumin, fennel seed, chili and tumeric. White basmati to soak up the creamy liquids. Always eat too much when it's India centered, tonight was no different.

Dessert was fruit from the summer freezer into a pie, rhubarb/raspberry/blackberry pie, and of course topped with Greek yogurt, almost feels like summer.

Beverage- local craft brewer IPA, Ransack the Universe from Collective Arts Brewing, they use the art of local artists on their cans, always changing. This one uses Galaxy hops from Australia and Mosaic hops from Yakima Washington.

Music- American Band, Drive-By Truckers

dave

[stringsthings]

I don't have any pictures, but I managed to put together a pretty good jambalaya today.
Chopped up some onions, bell pepper, poblano pepper, and garlic.  Made the rice with chicken stock
and diced tomatoes.  For proteins, I used some fresh blackened chicken, andouille sausage, and shrimp.
Plenty of cajun spices and some extra cayenne pepper.  Spicy!

[midwayfair]

Always eat too much when it's India centered, tonight was no different.

I have this problem, too.

Made a pretty good chana dal, spinach, and paneer qorma over the weekend. Finally figured out that it's better to make the dal separate than to just cook them in the braising liquid. Looked much cleaner (doing it the other way makes for a very unappetizing-looking meal) and the texture was better.

[stringsthings]

In the midst of perfecting my jambalaya recipe, I picked up a few habanero peppers at the local grocery.
They're small and bright orange and very inexpensive.  ( I bought 4 for 24 cents ! )  Adding just a bit
really brings a nice, upfront heat to the dish.  The cayenne pepper adds a good amount of backend heat.

Warning:  unless you have a high tolerance for heat, don't do what I did when I first bought the habaneros.
    Foolishly, before I added them to the dish, I cut up a few rings into very tiny pieces and popped one of those
    pieces into my mouth.  ( It was really tiny! )  Bad move on my part.  My mouth was burning for about 15 minutes.
    I didn't have any milk on hand so I just rode it out.  Having learned my lesson the hard way, I now just add the cut
    peppers into the dish and wash my hands, knife, and cutting board thoroughly.  4 peppers will last me a good while.
   

If you can eat this many peppers at one time, you either have a deathwish or an exremely high heat tolerance! 

[raulduke]

On the 5:2 diet at the moment to get rid of some of that Christmas flab.

Jamie Oliver's Super Food books are proving invaluable (most meals under 600 calories).

I'd highly recommend them. Every recipe we've tried (up to around 20 now) has been amazing.

This was one of the best for me (probably one of my favorite pasta dishes)
http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pasta-recipes/skinny-carbonara/


O/T: I don't know if you guys have Jamie Oliver books in the US?

I know he tried to 'crack' America like Ramsey, and failed miserably 

[stringsthings]

I love pasta!  Might have to give this one a try.

[midwayfair]

The first time I had hummus was made by one of my Arabic teachers at DLI. Completely ruined me on the stuff you can get in the supermarket.

Making hummus is relatively easy. Waiting for pita to cool is not.

[midwayfair]

And today is fancy lunch. Mushroom mix (couldn't afford morels, but shitakes and oyster mushrooms are frigging delicious) and an egg on homemade bread with a plum wine and mushroom stock reduction. Frigging delicious. And because I'm being decadent, I decided to have a tiny glass of 1983 Don PX sherry to go with it.

I guess I was feeling spendy today. I also treated myself to a new blank notebook to do math problems in ...

[mcasemo]

tap tap.....is this thing on?  made something i'm proud of, chicken and dumplings from donald link's real cajun.   i may have posted this before, sorry if so.

[midwayfair]

Tasty looking dumplings, mmm.

[alanp]

Do you have lolly cake in the USA?

[somnif]

Do you have lolly cake in the USA?

(Googles lolly cake) ...huh. Nope, not a clue what that is.

[alanp]

http://www.bite.co.nz/recipe/10468/Eskimo-lolly-cake/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolly_cake

It's pretty much made of sugar, mixed with sugar, with a little bit of sugar added for flavour. But very colourful, and always goes down well with kids (wow, what a surprise...)

I don't know how to describe eskimo lollies, other than being a bit like compacted, quite a bit denser, slightly chewy marshmallows. If you can find something similar, it's well worth having a crack at making this.

[somnif]

We have a similar candy in the states, commonly called "circus peanuts", but don't know of cakes made from them.

Sounds similar to Rum balls though, ground up cookies held together with a bit of honey/condensed milk/corn syrup.... and rum. Lots of rum.

[alanp]

If anyone tries the recipe, let me know how it goes down.

We have rum balls here, quite different to lollycake