Tomatilla!

Ingredient nominations close at the end of the day on Thursday. So far the list is:

Parsnips, sweetcorn, apples, red peppers, seaweed, rice, carrots, a root vegetable, basil, fish sauce, butternut squash, scallions, little fishes, quinoa, anchovies, olives, yoghurt, barley, fennel, pumpkin (or any squash) seeds, fancy vinegar, cranberries, cream of rice, cornish hens, honey, something [...]

Thanksgiving Day is one of my favorite holidays. I truly enjoy cooking the meal. It’s basic ceremonies and premise are non-sectarian and uplifting and mostly we have friends over who would otherwise be on their own. This time it was just us and two friends and that made it more manageable than normal. I couldn’t [...]

This is a tale of two dressings. You have heard about the turkey and you will hear about the side dishes. But in my mind, the dressing is what makes the Thanksgiving meal. So I take it VERY seriously. This year I only made one dressing but with two variations.

Main Dressing – cooked outside the [...]

Continuing onward with our epic (well actually reasonable and created in order to be manageable and worthwhile) meal, we come to all the other side dishes.

First, Jan made the truly amazing and unforgettable lemon cake – perhaps the best one she has made yet. Our guests (Dot in this case) brought a wonderful homemade sweet [...]

Since the Paper Chef will be kicking off on Friday, we only have 3 more days to get nominations in. The current ingredient list is pretty impressive already though:

Parsnips, sweetcorn, apples, red peppers, seaweed, rice, carrots, a root vegetable, basil, fish sauce, butternut squash, scallions, little fishes, quinoa, anchovies, olives, yoghurt, barley, fennel, pumpkin (or [...]

Actually it’s pretty simple. It is time to nominate new ingredients. Rules are simple – anyone can nominate one ingredient – any ingredient as long as it is not objectionable. A few ingredients are banned since they got used last time. Those would be basil, lamb, orange and fish sauce.

The current list is:Parsnips, sweetcorn, apples, [...]

Wow! I just ran across a great food blog resource in my never-ending search for more and better food blogs. Just go check My Dhaba out. First of all it is a great Indian food blog in its own right, but then go look at that monster blogroll list of other Indian food blogs on [...]

Mrs Deedop and Chopper Dave have done us proud (especially Mrs D what with writing a novel while running the Paper Chef!) and their roundup and adjudged choice are up at Belly Timber along with their usual brand of erudite and witty commentary.

Next month’s Paper Chef will start December 2nd and we will do our [...]

This was a challenge. Oddly enough I had more trouble integrating basil into the mix than anything else – partly because I couldn’t get Thai Basil on short notice so I had to make do with the sweet Italian basil in the pot by the kitchen sink!

I decided to make a marinade first – fish [...]

For those of you in the Bay Area, see if you can get hold of the latest Diablo Magazine (same idea as San Francisco magazine but for Contra Costa/Alameda). The November issue is their food issue and is very nice and full of good East Bay food articles, but much more important, Digital Dish gets [...]