beccaboo

Zucca agrodolce's good: peel, seed, and slice (1 cm thick or so) the squash, then fry the slices in a little olive oil, turning once,so that both sides are getting brownish. Arrange the slices on a platter and sprinkle them with chopped mint and thinly sliced garlic. Add a couple of tablespoon each of red wine vinegar and sugar, and a little salt and pepper, to the frying pan. Cook till it starts to thicken, then pour over the squash. Serve at room temp. This casserole's good, too: Peel, seed and dice the squash (any size dice you want, but the smaller, the prettier) and toss with salt, pepper, minced parsley and garlic, and a little flour (maybe 3 T for a medium butternut squash). Spread into a greased, shallow pan, dribble with olive oil, and bake in a medium oven till it's soft and getting to be a nice color, 45 minutes or so.

I like canned peas too, and (ew!) canned spinach! I eat the spinach right from the can, sprinkling on vinegar as I go.

I like the usual suspects--garlic and onion frying, bread baking--but my dislikes may be a little more unusual: fried chicken and baking ham. I often smell these when I'm out walking, and they seem like sickening, unnatural smells out-of-doors.

I think that might vary from brand to brand. The canola oil my father gets is disgustingly fishy, but my Spectrum Natural organic canola oil tastes fine to me. I don't use it for deep-frying, though.

We have a Maytag glass stovetop that we got last November (our old, inferior stove broke just before Thanksgiving, and we had to get a new one right quick), and I carefully read all the booklets that came with it and there was no mention one way or the other of cast iron. It did say, though, not to use glass pans. I use cast iron pans all the time, and they work fine. I use my big canner, too, that's bigger than it ought to be, and it works fine. I like my new stove!

One more fig idea: Quarter some figs, and roll them around in a little red wine, honey, and black pepper. Cut some seckel pears into sixths, and roll them in a dressing of lemon juice, walnut oil, salt, and mustard flour. Let the pears and figs soak while you fix the rest of dinner. Candy some pumpkin seeds--cook them with a little sugar in a frying pan till the sugar's carmelized and the pumpkin seeds browned. Just before serving, toss arugula and thinly sliced fennel in a dressing of pumpkin oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Lay it on a platter and arrange the figs and pears on top. Leave the pumpkin seeds in their own dish, to be sprinkled on just before eating. I made this for a party last night, and everyone really liked it.

When I'm eating a raw carrot I like to eat the phloem off first, trying to keep the xylem intact, even though the xylem isn't usually as tasty as the phloem. I save the very end (the stem end) for my dog Margaret, who will have been intently watching me eat.

I think I made it with powdered. Fresh would be better, though--if you want to use fresh, use mabe 2t to 1T grated, and cook it along with the pears so the stringiness (sp?) gets strained out along with the pears peels and seeds.

This is a good way to use up over-ripe pears--just cut out the bruises and worms. Pear butter Cut the blossom ends out of the pears, then roughly chop them and cook in a tiny bit of water till soft. Run through a food mill or sieve, and measure the mush. For 6 cups of mush add 3 cups of sugar, 1/4 cup orange juice, 1 teaspoon orange zest, 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/2 teaspoon ginger (or more if you want it gingery). Cook till thick (running a spoon along the bottom of the pan leaves a trail that takes a while to fill in). Pack into jars and boiling-water-bathe for 15 minutes.

I think fig season is winding down. Figs seem to grow anywhere where it's temperate but doesn't get too cold--I know people who grow them here in Seattle, and I've read about growing them on south-facing walls in England--but they do better where it's hotter, like in California and Italy.

I made roasted figs recently, from a recipe I got from the paper: roll the figs in olive oil, pepper, and coarse salt, then impale each with a small sprig of rosemary. Roast at high heat for about 15 minutes--till they've swelled up and look like they'll explode if you leave them in any longer. These made a nice snack for us to eat while playing cards.

Jams: apple-ginger, apple-blackberry, pear-lemon-ginger. Pear butter's good. I make it like apple butter but with ginger and nutmeg for the spices, and white sugar instead of brown.

Just like the other, but with a lime or two (depending on their size) in place of the orange, and a couple of tablespoons (or more) minced candied ginger in place of the cardamom. Jaust add the zest and juice of the limes, not the chopped pulp. I think maybe we actually liked this better than the orange kind. I made them on the same day, and I remember we'd expected to like one better and were surprised that we preferred the other.

I made it long ago while visiting my father, who has fig trees. I think this would work: 1 qt chopped figs 2 C sugar 2 oranges--zest slivered and flesh chopped 6 cardamoms, de-husked and crushed Just cook everything together till it becomes jam--about 220F if you want to use a cnady thermometer, or else till it looks right. If there are any seeds in the oranges, wrap them in a cheesecloth bundle and cook them in with the rest. When it's done, pack into hot jars and boiling water bathe for five minutes. I made some fig-lime-ginger-jam that was good, too.

Just this morning I had the last of some Tunisian carrot stuff on toast, and it made a very nice breakfast. To make the carrot stuff, thoroughly cook some carrots, then mash them with a fork along with crushed garlic, harissa, olive oil, lemon juice, and salt till it's all mushy but still kind of lumpy.

Fig jam's nice. The best I ever made had cardomom and orange. Just tonight we had figs for our pudding--I just cut them in half (they were really small or I'd've quartered them) and rolled them around in a mixture of honey and rosewater (about 1 1/2 T honey and 1 t rosewater. That was pretty tasty, and might also be nice flavors for jam. If you should decide to can your preserves so as to keep them outside of the refrigerator, be sure to add some acid ingredient like oranges or limes, because figs aren't acid enough on their own to can in a boiling water bath.

Maybe intestines are really popular in Taiwan, where these ones were manufactured.... They did turn out pretty well--my mother wanted me to write down the recipe, so I could replicate it in the future.

What I do with basmati is: 1) Soak it anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours 2) Fry it along with some spices in a little oil (ghee would also be good, but not butter, I think) 3) Add cold water, bring to a boil, turn heat down to low, cover pan, cook 15 minutes 4) Take off heat, let rest 5 minutes 5) Fluff-n-serve I do wild rice in a pressure cooker, and haven't yet figured out the right amount of water to use--it always comes out too wet, and I have to drain it. I think wild rice varies a lot in how much water it requires. In my pressure cooker I do about 2.5:1 for 22 minutes at high pressure, and there's only a little bit of excess water.

Here the intestines are in their packet: note the large, cunningly coiled heap of intestines in the photo. Here's what they actually looked like: sparse, and disappointingly pre-cut. And here's a tasty plate of vegetarian intestines, fried up with shallots, tomatoes, chiles, and basil! My mother, my dog, and I liked them, but my daughter did not.

I think soaking does make the grains even longer. The excessive stickiness is probably from using too much water, not from lack of soaking: the rice doesn't absorb much water while soaking.

They were pretty good. They didn't taste like much, but they had a pleasantly rubbery texture, kind of like octopus. I took pictures to show you all, but they're nowhere to be found on the computer--I'll have to get them out of the camera again, and then I'll tell about the intestines in further detail.

The main thing you do different with basmati is soak it for at least 15 minutes, and I think that's to help the grains get longer. When it's cooked, each grain should be long and slender, "like ladies' fingers." After it's soaked, you can either do the no-stir, no-peek thing (but with 1.5:1, not 2:1), or fry the rice with some spices and things before adding the water.

I'm making them tonight--I guess I'll fry them with some tomatoes, chiles, and pepper, and add some soybean sauce and sesame oil. I'll tell you how they turned out. (edited to fix grievous typo)

There's and article about flexitarians in the Toronto Star.

That's Margaret! Recipes always say to use more water with brown rice, but I think it's better with less. I never used to like brown rice till I discovered this. I don't ever add salt to my plain rice--like plain jasmine served along with Thai food--but I do add it to pilaus and things. It's a matter of taste. Plain brown rice seems too plain to me, though, so I like to add a little salt, or maybe a blob of nice, salty Marmite.