shain

I don't know what texture you are after, but if you want it to be smooth, than I think you will have better result by blending it before freezing. You know gave me an idea to use cubes of frozen buttermilk or beet juice instead of ice. I'll try it next summer.

Spicy "orange soup" - butternut, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, carrots - all roasted until caramelized and rich. Parsley root, onion, ginger and garlic - sauteed. Thyme, cinnamon, fennel seeds, chili, parsley. Blended smooth. Topped with savory-sweet and cinnamony granola, pumpkin seeds, sour cream and some paprika for color. I usually top this soup with only those seeds in order to hint of the pumpkin & squash used in it (and because it's crunchy and tasty) I love to add those seeds to granola, and considering the cinnamon in the soup, topping it with crispy granola seemed quite right

I keep pasta water in the fridge if I know I'm going to cook pasta again in a day or two. Using less water also helps. Otherwise, I think potato starch is the best in giving texture and thickness, but you should make sure it doesn't clump. You can also make a water based roux and add it to the sauce. Very similar effect. And by the way, does anybody else find starchy pasta water to be really tasty? (if it's not overly salty)

Toasting bread real hard - good for firm croutons that stay crisp. Lighly warning baked goods and cake slices (I find to prefer most cakes slightly warm and not room temp) Melting chocolate, butter, etc. Making bombs out of hard bolied eggs.

Small pears - cooked in reduced white wine, sweetened with caramelized sugar and flavored with star anise. Filled with, and served on, a mixture of warm ricotta and sour cream, flavored with orange zest, vanilla and cinnamon. Lightly sweetened with honey. Remaining hot, sweet and lightly acidic syrup drizzled on top. A cinnamon flavored tuile, rolled to resemble a cinnamon stick.

Leftover mashed potatoes, pan fried in a little butter. Chopped salad with tahini sauce. Also some fresh cheese (fromage blanc).

A somewhat pale but tasty dinner. Potatoes and beans cooked in PC until soft, with bay leaves and the potato peels for flavor (the peels were later roasted as a crispy snack). Potatoes mashed with butter and malt syrup. Beans mixed with pan fried mushrooms, a touch of thyme and smoked paprika. Roasted leeks, with only salt and butter. Creamy and salty sirene cheese, mostly eaten with the leeks and beans, it doesn't mix well with the potatoes.

@Anna N Looks delicious. How does it compare to butternut, other than portion size?

Homemade sagnarelli pasta with a vegetarian Bolognese style sauce, with mushrooms, sofrito, eggplant, tomatoes (probably the last non-cherry I'll have until next season) and a few chickpeas. Browned, deglazed, then pressure cooked with spices and herbs. It doesn't taste like, neither should it taste like, ragu Bolognese, but it is very tasty. The various veggies give it a pleasant texture and it does hit many of the same hearty notes. Based, but highly modified, on this recipe by Kenji of SE. I almost forgot the grating of parmesan!

Rolled cookies filled with date paste, chopped walnuts and a hint of cinnamon. The dough is a crisp and tender and has ground almonds and walnuts mixed with the flour. It's one of my favorite cookies. One roll has a little coconut and cardamom mixed into the filling, barley enough to be able to identify them.

@sartoric Coconut sticky rice, if I may suggest. Oh, and also some mint. This is a combo I truly love.

My go to is either French style omlete or fluffy scrambled (which is quite the same only left in pieces). Poached is also great. I really don't like browned, over cooked omletes. Hard boiled is only good sliced or chopped in a salad, sandwich, on hummus, etc. I'm not a fan of fried eggs either, it always feel to me that they should have been poached instead.

What I usually call egg sandwich is quite different. I take hard boiled eggs and roughly mash them with a fork along with tahini sauce and red schug, topped with few thin pickle slices, between two warm bread slices. Yum.

I took advantage of a sunny day to have a more summery beer before moving on to more hearty ales. Not being a much of a hop-head, I didn't like most of the Brewdog's beers I had so far. Therefore I was very happy with this one, very flavorful and fruity, though I tastes more passion fruit than grapefruit.

Thai coconut cream based curry with sweet potato, soft silken tofu, chili peppers, chickpeas. The picture I took was really out of focus, so this is a pic of the exact same dish from a while ago (looks pretty much the same, only that this time I chopped the cilantro). I did got the picture of the curry paste ingredients right.

Hungarian vegetable and beans soup. Served with egg noodles and a simple crisp bread to dip in. Carrots, onion, button mushrooms, celery, parsley root, cabbage, frozen peas. flavored with plenty of hungarian paprika (gently hot), garlic, coriander seeds, caraway, allspice, dill and parsley.

I tried two recpies by Kenji from Serious Eats. The first is a recent recipe for roasted potatoes, promised to be very crisp thanks to boiling with baking soda. I sticked to my usual seasoning of cumin, paprika, chili and turmeric (he calls for garlic and rosemary, but that's a flavor combo I usually use for small baked new potatoes). It was very tasty, and crisp when straight out of the oven, but not much crisper than the recipe I've been using until now (an older recipe by him, but using vinegar instead of soda). The second recipe is for crisp king oyster mushrooms, with bacon-like flavoring. It was also tasty, but felt more like a snack, slightly like potato chips, but also a little chewy, and very light.

Haha, yes it's nice to see how dishes change from region to region and house to house. In Turkey they serve a shakshuka-like dish with the eggs scrambled in the sauce. And under Turkish influence, the Hungarian created their lecsó, my grandparents are of Hungarian descent, and so I learned to like this dish from youth. I never connected the dots between this dish shakshuka until I was much older. The version of lecso I make (not nearly often enough) has more peppers and paprika, as well as plenty of browned onions I don't remember if they used to add caraway, but I add it to this dish as well - no cumin though. My short cooked shakshuka is even more like an hot salsa with barely cooked tomatoes and strong garlic flavor and also sumac. I encourage you to try the tahini, I don't find it to be too much at all, rather its fattiness smoothes the sauce spices, and the nutty flavor is also nice. The spice paste is made separately because I find the long cooking in the sauce mutes some of its flavors - mostly of the garlic and the cumin. It's definitely not a must-do. And about the caraway, I don't think I ever had it in dessert before, I can imagine it working in some crisp cookies, where I will usually put anise seeds. Do you have a favorite sweet that uses it?

Baked two small focaccias this evening. First one is with rosemary and garlic infused olive oil (the fried garlic scattered after baking), a little sesame and sea salt. The second was topped with lightly caramelized onions, sesame, sea salt and a lot of tart sumac post-bake (I quite like sumac with onions in any form). Regular olive oil for this one. Both were baked in a pan, placed on a baking steel in a 260dC oven - first covered for 15 minutes, then another 10 without cover to brown. During the last few minutes I missed the onion getting too dark, but luckily no bitterness came through.

You can add some sweet potato for sweetness, curry, ginger, cilantro (if you like it) and finish with some orange juice. This is a soup I like a lot (but I usually use other squashes, spaghetti squash is not my favorite).

@Wayne I also sometimes freeze whole tomatoes, but I never freeze peppers since they are good here almost year round (the only time they aren't good is in the peak of summer since the excess heat makes then bitter). Tahini is a very common addition to shakshuka in Israel. Merguez sausage are also common. Eggplants and feta are less common. To me however, tahini is a must. Caraway is a Tripolitan (or Libyan in general) addition. It is not very common Israel and should not be overly strong in the final dish. I include it about half of the times. I will also note that shakshuka can be made with a long range of cooking durations, leaving the tomatoes anywhere from barley cooked, firm and a little acidic, to slow cooking, bringing deep and rich flavors.

Consider making this if you have some late tomatoes that need to be used, or live in a part of the world where it's summer. If you don't have ripe fresh tomatoes, canned ones work very well. In Israel, shakshuka is most popular as branch or breakfast, but it can also make a lovely dinner. This serves four. The sauce can be made ahead, portioned and kept refrigerated for a few days, or frozen. Base souce: a little oil (1/2 tablespoon) 700-750g ripe red bell peppers (3 large), cut to roughly 1cm (1/2") 650g of very ripe tomatoes (5 large), optionally peeled and roughly chopped (about 3cm, 1") 1-2 hot green chilies of your variety of choice (preferably vegetal and not bitter), thinly sliced into rings 3.5 teaspoons salt (to taste) about 1/2 teaspoon black pepper A few tablespoons of chopped parsley A couple of tablespoons of chopped cilantro (optional) Spice paste: about 2 tablespoons of good olive oil 8-9 cloves of garlic, minced 3 teaspoons of ground cumin (freshly ground if possible) 1/2 teaspoon of ground or whole caraway (optional) 2-2.5 tablespoons of Moroccan sweet paprika (more earthy and less sweet/herbal then hungarian. I think spanish style will be good as well) If you like extra hot, or if you don't use fresh chili, then sub hot paprika for some of the sweet paprika Tahini sauce (makes more then needed): 1/2 cup good tahini (seek one which is pale, nutty and naturally sweet) 1/2 cup very cold water 3 tablespoons lemon juice (+ more to taste) salt to taste 1-2 cloves of minced garlic (optional) -- Mix all of those, add more water if it is very thick. Can be kept up to 4 days. To finish: about 8 eggs (assuming 2 per serving) more salt and pepper, to season the eggs some more parsley about 2 tablespoons of the tahini sauce To serve along: A crusty bread with a soft crumb, unsliced (I usually opt for challah or french style bread) - make sure to slightly heat it in the oven so that it gets crisp and warm More of the tahini sauce Extra hot sauce - Filfel chuma is the best if you can buy, or make it (very easy to do so) Olives (or pickles) Process: Prepare the spice paste: in a small pan, heat oil, garlic, cumin, caraway - until aromatic and lightly sizzling, about 3 minutes. Add paprika and stir. Cook a minute or so and remove from heat. Prepare the sauce: In a shallow wide pot, or a deep pan, saute the bell peppers with a little oil over medium-high heat. Add a generous tablespoon of the spice paste and stir with the peppers. Cook until the peppers soften, roughly 10 minutes, being careful not to burn the spices. Add the tomatoes. Lower the heat to medium-low, and cook for another 30 minutes or so, until thickened slightly (it will get thicker with the eggs). Add remaining spice paste. Add salt, pepper and herbs. At this point, the sauce can be portioned and refrigerated. If portioned, transfer the sauce to a pan of suitable (smaler) size. Lower the heat. If cooking 4 eggs or more, break them ahead of time onto a plate. Using a spoon, create a shallow indentation in the sauce for each egg (this will keep them from sliding). Place an egg in each indentation. Gently stir the egg whites with the sauce around them, only a little - do not break the yolks. Season the top of the eggs with some salt and pepper. Cover with a lid and cook on a bare simmer, until the eggs are just barely cooked (like poached eggs) - consider that they will cook some further from the residual heat of the sauce. Sprinkle with parsley, drizzle with tahini. Shakshuka is served in the pan it was cooked in! If you eat alone (or comfortable with your companion), eat directly from the pan. Otherwise, gently transfer to a plate. The bread is best left unsliced, rather teared and dipped into the sauce and eggs (The Hebrew language has a term for tearing of bread - לבצוע Livtzo'a). Add more tahini and hot sauce as pleases you.

Sunday dinner. Handmade egg noodles with stir fried mushrooms, smoked firm tofu, scallions and cabbage. Sauce made with orange juice and zest, soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, chili, fennel seeds, pepper, very little brown sugar and a couple of cloves. Toasted cashews. Todays dinner is not very photogenic (but quick and very tasty) - buckwheat (roasted, not green) with fried onion and mushrooms, mixed with avocado and plenty of pepper. Served warm with some sour cream.

@Kerry Beal looks very good! I hope that you enjoyed it. The mini pizza is really cute

From On Food and Cooking, by Harold McGee: The eggs I buy locally usually have an OK flavor, but on the few times I bought supermarket eggs, I had a few batches with no flavor at all. Can't remember having an extra strong egg.