Oven-Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

Have I ever mentioned that purple is my favorite color? I find the color exhilarating and like plants that bear purple fruits and vegetables, including tomatillos.

Our tomatillo plants were slow this year along with everything else in the garden. The extended cold, wet spring put a damper on things, making everything slow to grow and blossom. We finally harvested some tomatillos a few weeks ago, much later than last year, and with the early cold snap this week we didn’t get much of a growing season at all. All we can do is preserve what we have and hope for better next year. Read more

Thai Basil Chicken (Kai Kraphao)

This dish is the main reason we grow Thai basil in our herb garden. We’ve grown many kinds of basil over the years and seem to have settled into a routine of Genovese, Lemon (Sweet Dani or similar), and Thai (Sweet Thai or Queen of Siam) basil because they cover the spectrum of our uses. The Sweet Thai variety we grew this year produces plants with purple stems and gorgeous purple flowers. Like most basils, the flowers are also edible and add a punch of anise flavor to Asian dishes. Our basils will last a few more weeks, then it will be time for the final harvest of the season and a marathon session making pesto (basic and sun-dried) and basil ice cubes. Read more

The Daring Cooks Make Vegan Dosas

For the Daring Cooks September challenge, we made vegan dosas adapted from the reFresh cookbook by Ruth Tal. Fresh is a popular chain of vegetarian/vegan restaurants in Toronto, Canada with three published cookbooks teaching how to cook Fresh food at home. Our host Debyi of Healthy Vegan Kitchen chose this fun challenge for us, and I for one am grateful because this is the first time I’ve ever made Indian food and witnessed our two older boys actually eat it. Builder Guy (6) has recently developed a taste for spicy foods—good thing because we like our spices—and Top Gun (5) is finally coming around and trying new things. Monkey Boy is still a picky three-year-old, but he did eat one of the plain dosas. We thought the dosas were delicious and would eat that coconut curry sauce on just about anything. Read more

Zucchini Risotto

Zucchini season will soon come to an end, but there’s still time to enjoy this icon of the summer garden. We’ve made salads, pasta, bread, gratins, and all sorts of things with zucchini, even though it was a sad zucchini year for us after losing all our zucchini plants to garden pests.

Risotto is comfort food for me anytime of the year no matter what I put into it, and this one with zucchini and our fresh homegrown basil and garlic does not disappoint. The Grana Padano cheese adds a slightly nutty yet delicate flavor that is worth the search, but you can also substitute Parmigiano Reggiano if you can’t find Grana Padano. The recipe is adapted from My Italian Garden, by Viana La Place (in my personal collection), a lovely little book Read more

Spiced Vegetable Dal and a Memorial

My first cookbook from Sheila Lukins was the 1980s classic Silver Palate Cookbook, a popular book that led many people in the United States to change the way they cooked and viewed food. I’ve collected just about all of the books she wrote and have cooked from them many times over the years, learning something new with each dish. My favorite book of hers is the All Around the World Cookbook because it complemented my taste for authentic regional foods, and I’ve gifted copies many times over the years.

After learning of Lukins’ untimely death from brain cancer on August 30, I felt the urge to cook from her books again as a reminder of her importance in my own cooking. I opened my copy of All Around the World Cookbook and chose her Spiced Vegetable Dal, one of my favorites. Read more

Malted Milk Gelato

With Labor Day weekend upon us, we’ve reached the unofficial end of summer. School starts next week and the pool closes, two signs that summer is over, but we’re stretching it out a bit with this gelato based on one of my favorite candies from childhood, Whoppers. The inspiration for this gelato came from two sources: The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, and Making Artisan Gelato by Torrance Kopfer (both books in my personal collection). Lebovitz has a recipe for malted milk ice cream in his book, but I wanted to make it into a gelato, so I followed Kopfer’s methods to make the gelato base and used Lebovitz’s instructions for mixing the malted milk powder. If you enjoy gelato and want to learn how to make it at home, I highly recommend Kopfer’s book because it has so much helpful information on how to get that creamy gelato texture or at least approximate it with common home ice cream makers. Read more

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