back in the kitchen

After 10 days without cooking a single meal, I was actually excited and inspired to get back to making dinner. This month's bon appetit magazine was particularly full of good recipes so last week I tried out a few. Padang Curry was the best coconut based curry I have made yet. Going through the "hassle" of making curry paste is the difference between edible and good. A bigger hit though were the Corn Fritters which were devoured fresh and did surprisingly well reheated the next day. I recommend you give them a try. Don't forget the dipping sauce.
We took a trip to the library over the weekend and I picked up a book called "The Modern Vegetarian" by Peter Berley. Of the hundreds of options at the library, this one called to me because the recipes came across as creative without being weird and healthful while still being appetizing. Last night I made the Creamy White Bean-Garlic Soup with Rosemary which was somehow chock full of flavor and had about 5 ingredients. I will definitely make it again. I also tried this salad using raw mushrooms. The simple dressing contains no oil (healthy!) and the combination of fresh lemon juice and thyme and perfect for the season and their zing brought mushrooms to a whole new level. I just reread the recipe and found that I skipped over the step of whisking in 6 T olive oil. Umm, okay. How did that happen?! If you are attempting to avoid oils, go ahead and skip it like I did. We really had no idea. I'm sure adding it will mellow out the tang of the vinegar and lemon juice though so that is an option too. As it was, we decided the dressing was reminscent of mignonette and this would be our vegetarian version of oysters on the half shell. Therefore, next time I make this salad, I will be serving it with champagne.

Fresh Mushroom Salad with Lemon-Thyme Vinaigrette

2T fresh lemon juice

1T white wine vinegar (I used sherry vinegar because this is what I had)

1T finely chopped thyme leaves

1T finely chopped parsley

1t coarse sea salt

fresh black pepper

6 T extra-virgin olive oil

10 oz fresh white button mushrooms, trimmed and thinly sliced

6 cups mixed greens or lettuce

1) In a large bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, vinegar, thyme, parsley, salt and pepper. Slowly pour in the oil, whisking to emulsify.

2) Add the mushrooms and toss gently to coat.

3) Add the greens, toss gently and serve.

olives day 1

Last week a friend dropped off almost 20 pounds of fresh olives. Apparently I have the reputation for a willingness to deal with free food that is labor intensive. This is the same friend who brought me pounds upon pounds of quince. So my knowledge of curing olives is about zero, which meant I headed straight to the internet and luckily found some suggestions that seems valid enough. The only trouble is that you don't know if the experiment is going to work until you are at least a month in, probably even longer. With so many olives, I decided to try 2 methods.
Method 1: Slice each (and every) olive and dump in a bucket filled with cold water. Alternately you can gently bash them with a mallet or rolling pin, I did some of each as an experiment, Make sure they are all fully submerged and put the container into the fridge. Once a day for about a month, dump out the water and fill with fresh water. When the olives are palatable, fill bucket with brine and season with herbs and spices as you please.

Method 2: Place all un-rinsed olives into a bucket, fill with vinegar salt solution and put into a cool dark place. Every month or so, dump out solution, don't rinse olives(!) and re-fill with fresh brine. In about 6 months they should be tasty.

Since this is is such a long term project with variable outcomes, I'm not giving you the exact recipes until I know they work. But I will give you the link to the methods I'm following. I'll update you as we get further along.