Cooking…for the halibut

To-Try Recipe #21: Eggplant, Red Pepper and Spinach Curry

I made this one a long time ago and had written down that it was, “delicately flavored and dreamy.” Bah!  It was neither and I don’t know why I ever thought it was good. I must have been really hungry back then!

Although it’s called a “curry”, it’s the kind that you spice manually instead of using pre-mixed curry paste or curry powder. But I like pre-mixed curry paste and curry powder!  Either one would have been an improvement over this one, which had cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, turmeric, and cayenne pepper for the spices.  And even with all those spices, it still came out bland.

Keep or Discard?  Discard, definitely

 

To-Try Recipe #22: Shashuka Egg Tomato Bake

This is from Good Housekeeping magazine, which I wouldn’t expect to be a source of good recipes for my taste nowadays. It used to be, but I’m not into heavy use of oil or salt or sugar, plus I like more spice than their recipes typically call for. But I was wrong, happily so.

It’s simply a little onion and garlic sauteed, then cumin and tomatoes added.  You add some baby spinach leaves, then crack an egg in (okay, they said crack eight eggs in, but I made do with one), and bake it for about eight minutes.  Delicious!

Keep or Discard?  Keep and treat myself from time to time

Review: At Midnight Comes the Cry

By Julia Spencer-Fleming 

After a long wait, we finally have the next installation in the saga of Russ Van Alstyne and the Reverend Clare Fergusson. And of course, Kevin, Hadley Knox, and some new characters to flesh out the story. It was worth the wait.  The author takes on white supremacist and anti-semitic hate groups, and does a decent job of making the people in the groups look and act just like any other people you might meet on the street. Or at work or in stores.

She seemed to cut the continuity a little thin at times, but not objectionably
so. For instance, one minute Russ is deciding he needs to do an airplane surveillance of the militia camp, and next minute there’s a plane in the air.  No necessary detail was omitted, but the story could have been fleshed out a little more.

But as usual, the action scenes are gripping and realistic. Loved that.  And the people, too. I hope there’s another one coming.

Cooking…for the halibut

To-Try Recipe #20: Teriyaki Fried Egg

 Looks hideous; tastes great

Yeah, I wasn’t supposed to flip it. And I was supposed to keep on cooking until the whites were brown around the edges. But I don’t like eggs done that way!

Still, it was really, really good.  Nothing complicated—just an egg dressed with teriyaki sauce (wine, soy sauce and sugar), served over a bowl of rice garnished with nori and green onion.

 
Keep or Discard?  Keep. And do it right just one time, just to see if I like it better that way.

First a brief Gardening Roots update

It's past pea time!  So I set up a "trellis" and planted snap peas. It's a mixture of old seed from a couple of years ago and new seed from Ferry Morse, which I don't like much. But it's what I had.

Yes, I know this looks awfully boring: 

While I was turning over the bed where lettuce, radishes and carrots is going to go, I found this. How it got there, I have no idea.

  

Cooking…for the halibut

To-Try Recipe #19: African Vegetables

 

This is technically a re-try, not a to-try. But it had been a long time since I made it, and I didn’t remember why I thought it was so good. Basically, it’s a vegetable stew seasoned with peanut butter, cayenne pepper, and cinnamon. And since I hate cinnamon in spicy dishes, it’s just peanut butter and cayenne pepper. And tomato paste, which gives it a rich flavor.

And yes, it is indeed still as good as I thought it was the first time. The only change I would make is to use unsweetened peanut butter. I have a jar of it, bought for the purpose, but it seemed silly to open a jar just to use a quarter cup when I already have an open jar of Peter Pan in the fridge.  But yes, that was a mistake.

Keep or Discard?  Keep. And do it right next time.

Review: Pets and the City

Pets and the City:

True Tales of a Manhattan House Call Veterinarian

By Dr. Am Attas

I liked this okay—it was cute and light and amusing. With occasional sad stories, although I think she steered us away from the really sad cases that any veterinarian must have to endure. There were a few that made you sad, but most of them had happy endings.

I got the impression it was one of those books written because everyone always told her, “You really have to write this stuff down!  Your job would make a wonderful book!”  Not because of any deep, overwhelming need she had to pull it out of her chest and throw it on the ground. Which is fine—sometime you just need a mindless amusement. (With an occasional lesson—Don’t Feed Grapes to Dogs!)

Cooking…for the halibut

To-Try Recipe #18: Sticky Miso Salmon Bowl

It was okay—there’s really nothing you can do to salmon to ruin it--but nowhere good as other salmon treatments like Dr Bruce's Awesome S
almon.  I’ll enjoy it while it lasts, but that’s all.

Keep or Discard?  Discard

Review: The Last Cheater’s Waltz

 The Last Cheater’s Waltz:

Beauty and Violence in the Desert Southwest

by Ellen Meloy

I can’t do justice to this elegant work; all I can do is explain how I reacted to it. The alternating subjects—beauty of the desert vs. violence of the atomic bombs that were developed and tested there—kept me alternating between wanting to read deeply and savor every turn of phrase...and wanting to skip past the awful stuff. Atomic explosions—the suffering they caused and will go on causing for as long as we likely will exist as a viable species—don’t make for good reading. Or thinking about.

And so I confess to skipping and skimming, a lot. But when I would suddenly hit upon a passage of heart-lifting beauty, I’d be deep into it; lost and not wanting to come back up for air.

I suspect people will fault her writing for being disjointed and somewhat random in coherency and flow. But that’s the way this sort of nature writing is supposed to be. It’s poetry—no, it’s better than poetry, because poetry is bound by a rhyme and a rhythm. Her writing springs from the rhythm of nature—long, slow pauses, bursts of action, and crash! of flash floods in the arroyos.