C. sapidus

Sartoric, masala dosa is one of my favorite things on earth, especially with rasam (spicy soup). Even better is Mysore masala dosa, with a spicy red coating inside the dosa. Have you ever tried that? Elder son and girlfriend visited so we and younger son spent a lazy Sunday shooting the breeze, solving world problems, and cooking tinga Poblana and arroz verde. Well I cooked while they solved world problems. Tinga Poblana started with pork butt simmered until tender in chicken stock with bay leaves and thyme. Gosh that made the house smell good. After cooling the pork was broken up into bite-sized pieces and sauteed with onion and garlic, cooked down with chopped tomatoes and chipotles in adobo, simmered with the strained pork broth, and served with sliced avocado and feta cheese. Arroz verde was cooked pilaf-style, with spinach, parsley, and cilantro blended with chicken stock, and topped with Poblano chiles, roasted, peeled and chopped. I would have taken a picture of the leftovers but when younger son returned from the airport with Mrs. C in tow, she was famished and younger son decided to have a second dinner . . .

Oh yes, potatoes would have been good Here Mexican basics are becoming readily available in standard grocery stores. Suits me just fine. For some reason iffy-looking food is often the best. I try to avoid burdening this thread with my usual egg - tomato - dried chile breakasts because, no matter how delicious, they look quite regrettable. Is that regrettable-looking food thread still alive? That was one of the funniest things I have ever read. Edit: Found it! Dinner II: The Gallery of Regrettable Foods (Part 1)

Another clean-out-the-fridge breakfast. Materials at hand: half a bag of spinach, a container of mushrooms, two Poblano chiles, Serrano chiles, unlabeled sausage, partly-used cilantro, feta cheese, and eggs. Also had onions and garlic around. Roasted and peeled the Poblano chiles. Cubed and fried the sausage, and then poured off most of the drippings. Dry-fried mushrooms in the wok until they were done squeaking, and then sauteed with some of the sausage drippings. Sauteed onions, Serrano chiles, and garlic, and then cooked down the spinach. Added in Poblanos, mushrooms, and sausage, feta, and cilantro, and then scrambled in the eggs. A little Cholula for flavor. A satisfying breakfast, leaving lots more room in the fridge. Somehow the phrase "hive-mind" kept popping into my head.

David, your tacos look delightful, and roasted Poblano crema sounds brilliant. Welcome home meal for Mrs. C - Baked garlic chicken and arroz verde (Mexican green rice, pilaf-style, with chicken stock and blended Poblano chiles, cilantro, flat-leaf parsley, spinach, garlic, and white onion). This is what it looked like for breakfast . . .

Warm red cabbage salad with bacon, feta, sauteed shallots, and sherry vinegar

Scrambled eggs with sausage, chipotle in adobo, and garlic. Leftover coconut milk subbed for cream. Morning paper to go with. Made a dent in the remaining leftovers, so I might have to get groceries this weekend. Well, I lived off the fridge for a week, but eventually one runs out of essentials like garlic and chiles.

Shrimp and fettucine with ancho - bourbon - cream sauce. Soak ancho chiles in hot water and blend with rice vinegar, garlic cloves, and Mexican oregano. Saute shrimp in butter until partly cooked, add bourbon, and light. Stir ("with caution") until flames die down, and then remove shrimp. Reduce sauce, add half-and-half and chile sauce, and simmer. Add shrimp, simmer until done, season to taste, and then toss with pasta. The recipe was supposed to use tequila and lots of cream. I prefer tonight's semi-improvised version. Ancho chile flavor was front and center (as it should be), bourbon added a nice note, and the limited volume of half and half in the fridge enriched the sauce without muting flavors.

Thanks! It was remarkably tasty for remarkably little effort. Although, to be fair, leftover yogurt was the focal point more than frozen spinach. Fresh spinach, yup, that would have driven the train. Thank you, Smithy. Um, Polish sausage and potato salad sounds pretty good to me. I have potato salad on the brain because I recently enjoyed hauntingly good potato salad at a bagel place. For what it is worth, reasoning behind the meal was as follows: 1. We buy frozen shrimp whenever it goes on sale, so we usually have shrimp in the freezer. 2. I like shrimp more than a certain beloved family member who happens to be out of town. 3. I am lazy and avoiding a trip to the grocery store. 4. I knew we had leftover yogurt, ginger, chiles, canned tomatoes, and a cabinet full of Indian spices. 5. I found a recipe that I had not tried before, from a cookbook I trust, that matched precisely the stuff that was cluttering up the fridge . . . Frozen spinach pizza tonight, jazzed up with garlic, Mexican oregano, black pepper, and cayenne. I need to get more feta cheese - feta and spinach are made for each other. Anyway, thanks again for the kind comments!

Mrs. C is out of town so I am cooking again. Cochin coconut shrimp with tomatoes: With coconut milk, yogurt, ginger, chiles, garlic, onion, grated coconut, coriander, and garam masala. The shrimp were poached in the flavorful sauce and turned out very tender. Turmeric rice: Pilaf-style with whole cloves and green cardamom, cinnamon stick, garlic, and bay leaves. "Express" bhaji: Steam-in-bag spinach quickly stir-fried with ginger coins and red chiles

Made one of my all-time favorite beakfasts: huevos al albanil (bricklayer's eggs), a variation on Diana Kennedy's recipe. Soak dried pasilla chiles and blend with onion, garlic, and chipotles in adobo. Fry the sauce and then stir in eggs. Serve on warm flour tortillas topped with feta cheese, with fried plantains on the side. I spared you all the picture, because it always looks like something that came out the wrong end of a dog with an upset stomach.

Yes, I found tostones, as our boys would say, not my favorite. Same goes for mofongo. I kept trying it when we were in Puerto Rico, but apparently I am not a fan of starchy plantains in whatever guise. Vaca frita sounds like rope vieja (in other words, good).

Thank you, Anna. Plantains are interesting. Hard and starchy when green, still starchy when yellow, but wonderfully sweet when black and soft. That's how I like them, and you can bring out the sweet by caramelizing them in a hot frying pan. We used to have a local Latino market that would give away over-ripe plantains for free, or at least at a discount. I would have charged more! Over-ripe plantains are also lovely cubed, fried, mixed into pilaf-style rice, and topped with a salty crumbling cheese. I look forward to your plantain remedy!

Thanks for the laugh! We had some nice, black, mushy plantains so . . . my favorite breakfast / dessert: platanos fried in butter and olive oil. Salt and sour cream to go with. Mrs. C's amaryllis in the background.

Fuchsia Dunlop recipes tonight. Luoyang black bean chicken: Marinated chunks of chicken thighs with soy sauce and salt. Deep-fried the chicken until golden. Stir-fry sliced ginger and a whole head of halved garlic cloves until soft. Add fermented black beans, Shaoxing rice wine, and then chile flakes. Add chicken and rice vinegar and stir-fry until done. Finish with scallion greens and sesame oil. Served over jasmine rice. Dry-fried green beans (vegetarian version): Deep-fried the green beans to soften. Briefly stir-fried dried chiles, Sichuan peppercorns, sliced garlic, ginger, and scallion whites, and then added the green beans. First time making this (usually make the version with ground pork) and it was simpler and equally good. Fortunately Mrs. C had saved some WW points for dinner.

Exactly! And a lovely cooking project you constructed, I must say.

You have an excellent memory. Thanks for the laugh! Mrs. C just started the new, revised Weight Watchers, so I expect plenty of veggies in our meals. Probably not as many cukes as when the boys were young.

Clean-out-the-fridge breakfast concoction: Shallots, garlic, Serrano chiles, and cauliflower rice sauteed in olive oil. Added roasted Poblano chiles, sausage, feta cheese, and Mexican oregano, and then scrambled in the eggs with half and half. Breakfast was spicy and satisfying, and the fridge is much emptier.

Elder son came home for a visit and girlfriends were elsewhere, so it was just the four of us. I can't remember the last time we had a meal with just the basic family unit. Camarones a la pimienta (peppered shrimp) over Mexican red rice. Sauteed white onion, garlic, and sliced jalapenos, added shrimp and lots of black pepper, and finished with a dollop of mayonnaise. Rice was made with pureed tomato, chicken stock, white onion, garlic, roasted Anaheim chiles, and cilantro. Crema de palmitos (pureed hearts of palm soup). Sauteed three bunches of chopped scallion whites and garlic, added chopped hearts of palm, pureed and heated with chicken stock, and finished with the chopped scallion greens. I had mine with crumbled feta cheese.

Hey Kim! Always nice to see you still frying a Pug.

Shelby!!!!!!! Great to "see" you! Boys are good - younger son is half-way through college, and elder son is graduated and working. Oh man, I do love dogs and kraut.

Hey, I haven't been on here since Mrs. C kicked me out of the kitchen but she is on a work trip this week, so . . . butternut squash curry with coconut milk, chicken stock, dried shrimp, Mussaman curry paste, and basil. Great to see Dejah and Ann_T still posting meals I would love to dig into.

Hey Shelby – happy 40th! Looks like you did it up right. And yes, homemade pesto is magical. No picture but we had a nice dinner tonight. Fish molee, Indian green rice, and stir-fried cabbage with fennel. Mrs. C enjoyed her meal on the couch, recovering from a trip to the ER after stepping on a roofing nail.

We looked seriously at induction when we renovated our kitchen a few years ago. There is much to like about induction but I like to bang pans around when I cook. Like, really slam them around. It did not seem that my preferred method of cooking would be compatible with a glass cooktop. We installed a 36" Bluestar gas cooktop instead, and absolutely love it. When we move, we will be getting another Bluestar. Edit: spelling

Pureed pumpkin soup – Simmered potato, ginger, onions, garlic, and jalapenos with turmeric. Added pumpkin puree, buzzed with a stick blender, and seasoned with lime juice and salt. Sizzled cumin seed, crushed fennel seed, and crushed fenugreek seeds in hot oil and added to the soup. I added a slug of half-and-half to mine; Mrs. C had hers as is. Doesn’t look like much but packed lots of flavor. I need to remember this recipe when opportunity arises to make a non-traditional Thanksgiving or Christmas soup. The inspiration for this soup was a friend recommending pumpkin puree to help with our 18-year old dog’s digestion. The dog wanted nothing to do with the pumpkin puree, and we happened to have some ginger and chiles . . . waste not, want not. Or to look at it another way - we ate food that the dog rejected.

Hi Patrick - I know very little about Cuban cooking. This was a sorta-followed recipe from The Catch by Ben Sargent, a gift from a friend. I have been quite happy with the handful of dishes I have cooked from this book so far - it has a "New England meets the Carribean" vibe. "Surfer's Snapper Chowder" was particularly outstanding. Your chicken looks and sounds fantastic, and has most of the known world covered with its ingredients.