Food, Photography and Bons Mots
Brilliant red strawberries picked at the peak of their ripeness floating on a bed of creamy mascarpone and suspended over a crisp rye flour crust… You need this tart. We are on the cusp of strawberry season here in California and this easy-peasy (and indulgent)…
Dear Meghan. You are one lucky girl. Movie star good looks. Handsome prince. Loaded grandmother-in-law. But why didn’t you put that elegant little foot down and insist on a real cake for your wedding? What was it with that frou-frou elderflower cake anyhow? I know.,…
I love adore soup! All soup.
Well…maybe not all soup.
I was once on a school district committee where one of the elementary school reps reported on her school’s “soup day.” Seems they had an activity where each student was asked to bring a can of Campbell’s soup. Any flavor. Then, all the cans were mixed together in a giant pot and all the kids enjoyed a bowl of soup for lunch. Yikes!
I dunno. Seems to me that random marriage of flavors has the potential to go ever-so-wrong if enough kids brought Cream of Shrimp, Beef Burrito and Green Pea soups.
Let’s get back to today’s soup recipe and the wonders of making homemade soup. What I find so special about making soup is the alchemy of the whole thing. You put basic vegetables and other ingredients together, give it a whirl in the blender (or not), and sometimes…sometimes… magic happens. There you are with an exquisite soup for your table.
So it was with this asparagus soup. Definite magic.
This isn’t just a cream of asparagus soup, by the way–as exquisite as a good cream of asparagus soup can be. This delicately-flavored soup gathers some interesting ingredients in the soup pot with the asparagus– fresh fennel and white rice (as a thickener). As an extra bonus, at the end you get to add a generous tot of pernod to the soup.
Pernod, if you are not familiar with it, is a French anise-flavored liqueur, the successor to absinthe when absinthe was temporarily outlawed as a purported hallucinogenic. Pernod reminds me a bit of Greek ouzo.
You won’t get any hallucinations with any of these liqueurs, but you will get a heck of a headache if you drink too much. Did that once in Athens. Only once.
Here’s the recipe:
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This recipe is an adaptation of one from Ina Garten’s Cooking for Jeffrey. You can buy the book on Amazon if you like. Here is the Amazon link: Amazon Books .
I gave a birthday party recently for two of my friends, one of whom had mentioned that she particularly enjoyed flan. So, there was no question that flan would be our party dessert. The history of flan is interesting. Flan has been enjoyed for…
I was reminded of Paul Simon’s iconic hit as I was making banana bread the other day. I’m quickly finding that there are at least fifty ways to make the sweet treat. (If you want to relive a bit of Paul Simon’s performance…
On a long-ago idyll in India, I discovered unimagined rice delights. There were soft puffy rice cakes called idli commonly eaten in the morning. Pilaf-like biryanis. Sweet pongals. Here is a take on a rice dish you probably have never imagined, a poha.
While I try not to use difficult-to-find ingredients in Blue Cayenne recipes, poha is, I suspect, something you don’t normally keep in your pantry. You can find it on the shelves of most Indian markets and, of course, on Amazon. The Amazon link is here. Poha is inexpensive. You don’t have to invest a lot of money to give this rice dish a try.
If you are a little intimidated by the prospect of making this out-of-the-ordinary dish, here is a good You Tube video: Indian Poha. The recipe I’m posting below has some different ingredients, but the video will get you past your unfamiliarity in prepping poha. It’s easy.
This recipe is adapted from one that appears in Madhur Jaffrey’s wonderful cookbook, Vegetarian India. If you are vegetarian (and an adventurous cook) or if you are just trying to prepare more vegetable forward dishes, this cookbook would be a wonderful addition to your collection.
Jaffrey is an award-winning actress (Shakespeare Wallah)and an inspired cook. She has written numerous cookbooks, seven of which have won prestigious James Beard Awards. She has been quoted as saying that her three best/favorite cookbooks are An Invitation to Indian Cooking, A Taste of India and the book from which this recipe is adapted, Vegetarian India. If you want to dip your toe in the water before investing in one of her books, just type in Madhur Jaffrey on your browser and you will find a number of wonderful recipes.
As the story goes, Ismael Merchant (of the movie-making duo Merchant and Ivory–Howards End, Call Me By Your Name) set the young actress (she is now 84) up for an interview with the legendary NYT food writer Craig Claiborne. Worried about the inadequacy of her tiny NY kitchen, Jaffrey borrowed the kitchen of a friend and proceeded to prepare stuffed green peppers, sour cream koftas and raita for Claiborne. Lucky man, Claiborne.
That was 1966. The rest is history.
Claiborne wrote adoringly about her and her inspired Indian meal–Indian food was pretty unknown in America in 1966–and her career as an Indian food writer was launched.
I’m thinking it would be fun to recreate the meal Jaffrey prepared for Clairborne. Wanna come?
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Your friends and neighbors who arrive home from idylls in the Caribbean usually bring back tans, lame pirate jokes, and rum cakes. Rum, of course, is ubiquitous in the Caribbean and entrepreneurs long ago learned to add rum to cakes to expand rum’s culinary…
I was lying in bed the other night when my iWatch tapped me on the wrist. (The watch has a haptic function that allows it to tap you lightly on the wrist with a vibration to deliver reminders, alert you to the end of…
When a wonderful baking resource like King Arthur Flour bestows the title of “Recipe of the Year” on one of its creations, I sit up and take notice. That is particularly true for me because I was so in love with their lemon bliss bundt cake winner for last year. (See recipe here.) If King Arthur Flour says a recipe is stellar, I believe it.
Recently, I wrote about Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez’ Hot Bread Kitchen and her recipe for hot cross buns. I hope you have tried them by now. They are pretty wonderful. (You can find the recipe here.) I remember reading in one of the sections of Rodriguez’ book that one of the questions HBK routinely asks trainee applicants (who are mostly immigrants) is what breads they already know how to bake. Invariably, she wrote, applicants list banana bread. Apparently, that bunch of overripe bananas that sits on our counters is one of those six degrees (or less) of separation that link bakers the world over.
Certainly, if you look online for banana bread recipes you will find unlimited takes on the traditional recipe. For example, I found a recipe for “I Be Jammin’ Jamaican Banana Bread.” That one made me laugh. There are lots of other variations, too– avocado banana bread, Nutella banana bread, chocolate chip banana bread and banana bread with a wide ribbon of cream cheese baked into the bread (I’m thinking I’ll try that one!).
Before you give all those exotic banana breads a try, bake this one. It is moist and full of banana flavor and will remind you how good traditional banana bread can be.
Here is the recipe.
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Here is the link to the original recipe from which this recipe was adapted King Arthur Flour Banana Bread
I’ve always enjoyed soup. It is my idea of comfort food. There is something wonderful about the chemistry of making soup. You put all those healthy ingredients together and (sometimes) voila! For the last few weeks my love affair with soup has taken on a…
