My, my, it has been a while, no? Rest assured I have not been idle. In addition to improving my running with crosstraining, intervals, and rigorous record keeping (nutrition, calories burned, heart rate, etc), the huge influx of summer produce has induced a euphoria of kitchen activity. Mind you I haven’t spoiled this fun with all the little details I usually bother with—namely, photographing and journaling for posterity—BUT, today I decided, “Why not?” That is my Jekyll (or Bertha?) personality peeking through the curtains. I am not ordinarily the most whimsical person, but this site is nothing but the indulgence of a whim.

While restraining myself from utterly devouring sweet, luscious white nectarines, peaches, and cherries, my recent flirtations have been with grain berries and ovo-lacto vegetarianism.

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Guest article by Tyler

After putting together two fantastic feasts for Thanksgiving and Christmas, Jenn is starting off the new year by taking a short vacation to drive the darkspawn out of Ferelden. Meanwhile, I’m going to write up our first experiments with recipes from a book on curry that Jenn received for Christmas. You’ll have to excuse the sub-standard pictures — I don’t have quite the presentation skills that my wife does.

The book is 660 Curries by Raghavan Iyer. This book caught our eye because while we both enjoy Indian dishes, we’ve never really made too much of it ourselves beyond a very simple and very Americanized chicken curry, a rather botched attempt at Baingan Bharta, and the much more successful Yellow Dal Puree just recently.

We thought we’d start in somewhat familiar territory by focusing on chicken curries. Much like a good chili, what separates a boring curry from an interesting curry is the sauce. The Americanized curry-from-a-box approach, or the slightly more sophisticated “try to make something like curry-from-a-box without using a box” approach is to make a relatively simple tomato paste-based sauce, and to load it up with vaguely Indian-seeming spices, and pour it over a mish-mash of vegetables and small bits of chicken. The chicken curries in this book are much more authentic, and are without filler vegetables: just substantial pieces of chicken stewing in a complex, flavorful, savory sauce.

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When I attended USC, there was a lunch shop across the street called A Taste of India. The fare was hardly haute cuisine, but it was warming, tasty, and very inexpensive for a budget-challenged college student. It was also my first real exposure to food from that region of the world. At the shop, they served a mellow, but delicious yellow dal mixed with spinach and diced tomato. This recipe attempts to recreate that dish, with a slight change in texture.

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Guest article by Tyler

Chili is a dish made from chiles that is wonderful to eat when you are chilly.

Chili is one of those dishes that nobody ever agrees on how to cook, so if you’ve ever cooked chili before you are guaranteed to hate this post and be very angry at me for all the mortal sins against southwestern gastronomy that I surely have committed in your eyes.

The reason nobody agrees how to cook it is because it is a dish of low origins. Originally, chili was a Mexican stew made from whatever meat was available, and heavily spiced with local hot chiles to hide the taste of the often spoiled meat. These days, thanks to the wonders of refrigeration, we no longer have to worry about covering up rancid flavors, but the spiciness of the chile peppers is still something that can be appreciated on its own merits.

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Chile Verde is a dish straddling the border between Mexico and the United States. It can be made with a distinctively Tex-Mex flair, served in burritos, or created as a rich broth for plain steamed rice called morisqueta. Even wilder variations of chile verde call for paprika, cinnamon, and yellow bell peppers or chicken instead of pork. To complicate matters further, there is another eerily similar dish, called Chilayo, which Diana Kennedy attributes to the Colima region of Mexico in her book The Art of Mexican Cooking. So given all this, what exactly is chile verde?

Well I can’t tell you what chile verde should be, because anything I say could be contradicted by at least ten Mexican grandmothers or world-class competitors in chili cook-offs (all of whom can hardly agree with each other). However, I can tell you all about my chile verde, which is a rather simple blend of common sense and personal preference.

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The weather in coastal Southern California can’t seem to decide what season we’re in, but I’m already jazzed about the arrival of Fall. Hot chocolate, morning fog, shorter days, impending food-filled celebrations, time off with the husbot—can I count the ways I love thee? And perhaps more than any other produce, squash is the signature item of the season. There’s quite a selection of squash readily available these days. Butternut squash, pumpkin, acorn squash, and kabocha are only a few of the varieties sold at the local grocery mega-mart and farmer’s market. That said, I don’t cook as often with squash as I would like. The few times I had squash served to me when I was young, the squash was bland or overly sweetened. (Think candied yams.) My husband is even more averse to squash than I am because of his prior experience. But I don’t think the humble squash is to blame for this poor reputation; I think many recipes for squash are just plain boring or poorly thought out. So when I got the yen to use some butternut squash this weekend, I avoided reaching for the traditional (and overused) butternut squash soup and instead tried to recall cuisines that might blend the savory with the sweet in a delicious, but starchy dish. Morocco and Algeria anyone?

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In the summer of 2006 I lost 40 lbs. Today, three years and some months later, the weight is still off and, in addition to staying on track, I’ve lost an additional five pounds. This recipe is a celebration of health and a farewell to my arch-nemesis: the up-and-down roller coaster of diet fads. For this success, I have the folks at SparkPeople to thank. I spent about a year with Sparky, and over those long months of tracking my weight, budgeting my calorie intake and expense, living on the forums, and listening to the advice of nutrition experts, I learned bunches about body maintenance and the negative impact of dieting mentality. That’s not to say I haven’t gone up or down a few pounds in all three years; hell, you can go down a pound or more just by sleeping eight hours. But every time I need to get back on track, I just remind myself of the principles and lessons I learned from Sparky.

Now onto the actual food!

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Chicken Marsala

Modern chicken marsala is usually prepared using chicken breast, which is then butterflied or pounded with a mallet.  However, I find the richness and sweetness of the marsala wine perfectly complement the depth of flavor in dark meat; chicken thighs are also conveniently the right thickness for this dish.

4.64 lbs chicken thigh
1 lb 9.8 oz mushrooms, sliced
1 shallot, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
homemade chicken stock
Florio sweet marsala wine
Ruffino Orvieto Classico 2008

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Il Grano’s very intriguing white peach gazpacho caught my eye in this article from the Squid Ink. Thusly inspired I set out to make my own creation.

The Base:
1 medium-small white peach
1.25 medium-small heirloom tomatoes*
1 shallot
2.5 tsps of sherry vinegar
salt
a bare hint of cinnamon

The Emulsion:
tarragon, the leaves of several stalks
2 small chile peppers, mystery variety**
olive oil

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