A Simple Curry

One of my favorite things in the entire word is having friends over for dinner. I like sequestering myself in the kitchen for a few hours and tuning into Thelonious Monk, playing mad scientist with spices, and ignoring the rest of the world until friends knock on the door and it's time to set the table. Sometimes I plate and serve full courses, and sometimes I spread all the elements on the table, and let my guests put together their own plates. The following curry works best in the latter format, as people can choose how much rice, vegetables, sauce, and garnish they want. It's a good meal for a smallish (4-6) dinner party.

Cilantro, Coconut Curry Sauce, Cumin Scented Rice, Roaster Cauliflower and Carrots, Steamed Spinach and Choi Sum

Curry Powder:

Peanut "Beef" Maifun

Apparently I tripped and fell off the blogosphere this last week. In my adventures off the web during the last week I've quilted, turned the Christmas music off and turned Amy Ray up, took my wife to A Christmas Story: The Musical (which I hope makes it to DVD eventually so I don't have to watch just the movie 500 times during the month of December, because the movie doesn't have pirates, and the musical does), was taken to Maurice Sendak's Nutcracker Ballet, took a trip to Oly to visit friends and share a squash dinner and my reasoning behind why December is my least favorite month of the year (really, America, do you need an excuse like Christmas to have goodwill and compassion? Can't we just have it regardless of what season it is?), I made a damn good faux beef stew, played slots with my mother-in-law, kicked it at Seattle's best les bar with new and old friends, saw Narnia: the Voyage of the Dawn Treader (which, btw, is not worth seeing in 3D, or perhaps even in the theater for that matter, but IS worth seeing for Will Poulter of Son of Rambow fame, who pretty much saved the movie), met with the tattoo artist that will be inking my arm in Banksy, found out I'm not shaped like a lemon, read quite a few chapters of the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, made a small dent in the 80 oz. jar of chunky peanut butter residing in my apartment, had coffee at Cafe Vita while watching an uncharacteristly Seattle type monsoon, drew on a napkin, and made a KICK-ASS asian inspired beef noodle dish.

See? I've been B to the U to the S to the Y. Maybe a little to busy, which is why it may have taken me 'til today to realize I was ignoring my computer on non office hours. The break was swell, but the swellin's gone down, and I'm back with vengeance. So here's one of the dishes I made this week, which I have affectionately dubbed Peanut "Beef" Maifun, and it's even more fun if you make it, share it with a friend, and hit the movies after.

Peanut "Beef" MaiFun

Zucchini, Yellow Squash and Spinach Soup

In a continuation of the “look in the fridge and figure out what to do with bits and pieces because I don’t want to go out on this rainy, blustery day” series, I find myself making soup. Again. Actually, I quite like soup, which I guess is a damn good thing, considering it looks like soup is shaping up to be a dietary staple…

At any rate, a good bowl of soup paired with a few slices of good bread (oh Essential Baking Company, I wish you could just come deliver Parisian loafs to my door three times a day), a decent glass of pinot grigio, and a few friends (who don’t mind eating whist sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor because I still don’t have any chairs) pretty much makes for the perfect night. Phew! Check out that run on sentence!

This soup is thick and creamy and bright fucking green! Like, Kermit the frog green. Which makes it really fun to eat. I also thought I’d share a nifty trick this recipe utilizes: to make a “creamy” soup without the cream, just add a potato or two. When you blend the soup, the starch will thicken it, giving it that thick creamy consistency.

Zucchini and Spinach Soup