Mushroom "Risoniotto"

A few years ago, the parents of my preschool group gave me a generous gift card to Amazon and I promptly ordered three cookbooks, including River Cottage Veg  by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.  I had perused the library's copy and decided it was a welcome addition to  my collection.  Fast forward five years and I hadn't made one dish from the book. Not. One.  I would read through the book and decide that I should give it away. Read through it again and decide that I must keep it. 

Thankfully, iheartcookingclubs is celebrating their tenth anniversary. Usually, they highlight one chef for six months and anyone can join in by cooking recipes by that chef. For IHCC's tenth anniversary, they are featuring all previous chefs (including Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall) giving me the perfect opportunity to actually cook from Veg.  I chose the Mushroom "risoniotto" on page 258 of the book. The Washington Post printed the recipe in 2013 (hopefully with Mr. Fearnley-Whittingstall's permission) so I am posting a link here.

It is easy to make and most ingredients are readily available if not already in your pantry. I found the recipe a bit bland, but to be fair, it says to add salt and pepper to taste and I didn't add a lot. I probably could have added more fresh thyme and maybe two teaspoons of balsamic vinegar instead of one. Still, this is a good dish for a simple, filling meal. 

Cinnamon Rolls

May, 2013.  Food Network magazine features cinnamon rolls on the cover. Yum. January 1st, 2018. I have finally made said rolls and they are indeed, fluffy and delicious. The recipe is here.  What took me so long?  

For years I have had a plan to test different recipes for cinnamon rolls, sticky rolls, pecan rolls, or any roll that is falls into the sweet and sticky breakfast category. I still have the Bon Appetit April 2012 issue that also features sweet rolls on the cover.  And I will make those rolls too, eventually. 

I have taken so long to make the cinnamon rolls because I keep planning on also losing weight, but there is a contradiction in dieting and baking caloric sweets. Not that it can't be done.  And this particular recipe, while easy to execute, requires three rises, one of which is rather lengthy. Thus, I had to find a time when I was feeling both indulgent and planned enough in advance that I could finish what I started. 

No special equipment or ingredients are needed; just time. Whatever variations I made to the original recipe were not the result of any particular expertise on my part. I used half and half in place of whole milk, because we only use 2% milk. Ironically, the 2% has more fat than the half and half. Because of carelessness on my part, I didn't roll the sweet dough out as much as the recipe calls for and I cut way back on the amount of butter listed to spread on the dough.  I am happy to report that none of these adjustments hurt the outcome. Would the rolls have turned out better if I had followed the instructions 100%. Probably. But no matter, they were still really good. 

One advantage of this recipe is that it starts with a sweet dough, which can then be made into any number of finished cakes or rolls. The May, 2013 index lists the links to the relevant recipes which include Mexican Chocolate Loaf, Poppy Seed-Lemon Twists and others. 

Ketchup

Patience. The key ingredient to making ketchup is patience. Other than that, it is a breeze to make. The recipe can be found in Curtis Stone's book What's for Dinner, or here.  You may note that the recipe is part of a meat loaf and mashed potatoes meal, but with the temperatures hitting triple digits, I'm not about to turn on the oven or make a heavy meal. We'll just have to use the ketchup on grilled hamburgers or hot dogs. 

Frankly, I was a bit skeptical about the value of making home-made ketchup. Perfectly fine brands of ketchup are available for purchase at reasonable prices, so is it worth it to make your own?   
At first, I was doubtful, but a quick glance at the ingredient list convinced me that if I didn't like the result as ketchup, it would make a terrific base for barbecue sauce, so I had nothing to lose. 

The main ingredient is fresh tomatoes. They are cut into quarters and pureed in a blender. No need to peel or seed them. Saute minced onions, mix in the readily available ingredients, bring to a boil, then simmer.  Next, the waiting. Except for the occasional stirring, you wait...and wait...and wait. 

The only deviation I made from the instructions was to use an immersion mixer at the end to get a smoother texture. 

The finished result is very tasty, but I won't be using it in place of ketchup. Maybe I'm a creature of habit and too used to Heinz. As I mentioned before, it seemed like a good base for a great barbecue sauce and it would be a wonderful sauce for the meatloaf. As a ketchup, it was too sweet for my tastes and it might have benefited from even more simmering to thicken it up a bit.  

It's potluck week over at I Heart Cooking Clubs. This means that member bloggers will be posting their tasty recipes from Curtis Stone and other chefs featured at IHCC. Check it out. 

Grilled Ginger-Sesame Chicken Salad

Aaaaaaah, Summer. How I love you. Endless lazy days with time to plan and cook those meals that somehow rarely get made during the busy school year. On today's menu is Curtis Stone's Grilled Ginger-Sesame Chicken Salad from What's for Dinner by Curtis Stone. If you don't have the book, you can use this link from a 2013 Redbook magazine article that calls Mr. Stone "gratuitously handsome."  Hmm, not even sure what that means.

The article did describe this recipe as "no-hassle".  I might have said "a little hassle," but I would also describe this as a perfect summer dish; lots of fresh veggies and no oven required. While the chicken marinated, I chopped the veggies. I grilled the chicken on the gas grill outdoors, so no heating up the house.  It had been a while since I had grilled outside. I forgot to oil the grate and regretted it when I had trouble turning the chicken. Even though I had preheated the grill and let the chicken cook undisturbed 4 minutes, it still stuck. Oh well. You cut the chicken into 1/4" slices for the salad so it didn't look bad.

The salad has wonderful flavor and crunch.  And more importantly, it was a hit with the family. Everyone enjoyed it, even the youngest who rarely eats vegetable, especially in a salad. 

 Summer means salads and Tides baseball

I'll be sharing this post with all the other avid cooks at I Heart Cooking Clubs. The theme this week? Grilling on the barbie. Head over to their web site to check out other tasty recipes. 

I haven't posted in quite a while. I didn't think my hiatus would be that long. I figured I wouldn't post over the Passover holiday, but then I was busy with my older daughter's college graduation, job negotiation and other life events. I'm looking forward to rejoining IHCC.

Snow Peas with Toasted Sesame Seeds

I Heart Cooking Clubs is featuring a new chef. After a fond farewell to Ellie Krieger, we are cooking from the recipes of Australian chef Curtis Stone. I didn't really know a lot about Mr. Stone, but after looking at his website Curtis Stone, I was intrigued. I don't own any of his books, but his web site is very generous....lots of recipes are available. 

It's been a couple of very busy weeks. I didn't think I would have time to post this week, but there are a lot of fresh, tasty and easy recipes available. I chose a side dish. The recipe is found here: Snow Peas with Toasted Sesame Seeds.  This is the second time I have ever cooked with snow peas. They are a new favorite of mine. I already had most of the ingredients on hand. All I needed to do was purchase the snow peas and shallots. The most time consuming part of the dish is stringing the snow peas. Otherwise, it comes together quickly as a stir-fry. 

I served this yummy dish with Jane Brody's Stovestop BBQ Chicken, one of our favorite chicken dinners. 

Go to IHCC to see all the other tasty ways other cooks are welcoming Curtis Stone to I Heart Cooking Clubs. 

Baby Spinach Salad with Dates and Almonds

We lived in Jerusalem for 8 1/2 wonderful years. We ate really well from a wide variety of foods. And yet, we never ate many of the foods found in Jerusalem, the cookbook by Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi.  When this book first came out, I was very excited. Although I've had it for three years, this is the first time I have cooked from it.  Thanks to I Heart Cooking Clubs for that.  Without the incentive of joining my fellow cooking bloggers, I would probably have enjoyed reading this book without ever actually making any of the dishes.

I chose to make a salad of baby spinach with dates and almonds. Looking through the list of ingredients, it wouldn't have occurred to me that these flavors would work together. The featured spice is sumac. Sumac? What's that? Apparently, it's a Middle Eastern spice that I never used before and is not commonly found in American grocery stores.  I did a quick internet search while standing in the spice aisle to find a suitable substitute. As sumac is often described as lemony and tart, some suggest using lemon zest, others suggest lemon zest with salt, or oregano or just using za'atar alone. I am sure these are all great suggestions, but in the end I remembered that I pass a Mediterranean deli on my way home from work. Problem solved. They had two kinds of sumac, Turkish and Lebanese. I chose the Lebanese. It has a tangy kick to it and it adds a deep red color to your food.

The recipe can be found in the book, Jerusalem, or here. You marinate dates and onions, sauté almonds and pita, and mix it all with baby spinach and other spices. I like that you use a variety of techniques and seasonings to end up with a beautiful salad layered with sweet and tart flavors.

We really enjoyed this salad. My spouse declared it tasty in a strange way, which I believe he meant as a complement. Both of us did finish the whole salad between us and it was only part of the whole dinner.

This week is potluck week at IHCC, so if you head over to here, you will find a wonderful variety of recipes by great chefs.

 

Aromatic Noodles with Lime-Peanut Sauce

In honor of St. Paddy's Day, it's Green Eating week at I Heart Cooking Clubs.  For this Irish holiday, I chose a dish featuring Asian flavors. Lots of green veggies and pasta are flavored with peanut sauce.  Originally, I was going to make this dish in February for our pasta themed week, but the snow peas and sugar snaps looked rather sad. 
So I waited. One month later, the veggies are green and crisp.  Ellie describes the vegetables as a "refreshing yin to the yang of the rich, spicy peanut sauce." Very true.

I've made many versions of peanut noodles, but this version is really good. The use of natural peanut butter and roasted peanuts give the sauce a deep, nutty flavor that is not too sweet. The addition of veggies make this a meal in a bowl.

 

The recipe can be found in The Food You Crave by Ellie Krieger or on the Food Network website.  You can also find more green eating at IHCC.  

Roast Chicken with Cumin, Honey and Orange

The first time I made whole roast chicken I made one chicken for four adults and two little children. I watched nervously as we cut the chicken and worried there would not be enough chicken to go around. Luckily, we had enough. I suppose having grown up eating chicken every week that I figured a chicken would be similar to turkey; endless amounts of meat with lots left over...or maybe chickens were just larger in the sixties.  Lesson learned.

I've probably roasted more whole chickens over the years, but not that many. I prefer chicken cut up into pieces; it's easier to cook and to keep track of how much I really have. However, a Mark Bittman recipe popped up on my Facebook page and it looked too delicious to resist. It features citrus and cumin. I was cooking for two this weekend so having enough was not a problem. I had all the ingredients at home.  And it's potluck week at I Heart Cooking Clubs, so I guess this was meant to be.

The very easy recipe can be found here.  Because I am trying to use up items that have been sitting in my pantry, I used some old honey that was halfway crystallized. I was worried that it would burn, but it turned out fine.



The chicken comes out moist, but as Bittman points out, this is not because of frequent basting. The basting adds flavor. Keeping an eye on the chicken and turning it every ten minutes, keeps it moist. The chicken was really good. Although next time, I may make it using chicken pieces instead of whole chicken.



Go to IHCC to discover a variety of other wonderful recipes this week.

Beef and Mushroom Barley Soup or Stew

We've been having a warmer than usual winter here in southeastern Virginia.  There have been patches of cold here and there, but the temperature is near the 70 degree mark this weekend.  Not exactly perfect weather for enjoying a hearty bowl of stew, but it is Bowled Over! week at I Heart Cooking Clubs and because I haven't made stew in over a year, I figured it was as good a time as any.

Ellie Krieger's recipe is really a soup, but I used about half the liquid and made it more of a stew. It was tasty, filling and very easy to make.  You brown the beef, chop up and sauté a lot of veggies, pour in the liquids, spice and barley. Let it cook on the stove top and voila.

I used Trader Joe's 10 Minute Barley. Apparently, our local branch doesn't carry regular barley. No matter. I put it in 15 minutes before the stew was finished (instead of 50 minutes) and it came out fine. 

The recipe can be found in The Food You Crave by Ellie Krieger. I couldn't find the recipe on-line although this one from foodnetwork.com is similar. Other warming, delicious options for soup/stew/chili can be found here.

Asian Noodle Bowl with Peanut Dressing

This is "Oodles of Noodles" week at I Heart Cooking Clubs (IHCC) . This means any pasta, noodle or noodle-like dish.  As I looked through Ellie Krieger recipes both in The Food You Crave and www.elliekrieger.com  I thought the peanut noodles looked the tastiest and most likely to please. Peanut noodles are my favorite pasta dish and I've made many variations through the years, but I'm always game to try a new recipe for the dish.  Clearly, the dish appealed to some of my fellow cooks at IHCC, because there are already two postings for this same dish. 

Ellie Krieger has two recipes based on peanut noodles that are similar. I almost made the one found in The Food You Crave. It features broccoli, snow peas and sugar snaps. The problem is that February is a difficult month in which to find sugar snaps. This dish is probably wonderful, but better suited to late spring and summer cooking.

Asian Noodle Bowl with Peanut Dressing is better suited to year round cooking, at least in southern Virginia. As it turns out, I had all but three of the ingredients in my pantry already. The recipe can be found here. Although I only made two changes, it is a versatile recipe. The changes I made (regular pasta in place of whole wheat and crunchy, not creamy, peanut butter) were the result of what I already had on hand and could use up.

Basically, the recipe features many of my favorite flavors.

I added carrots, red pepper, snow peas and spring onion as written in the recipe. This recipe was a winner in my house. Usually, I don't add veggies or roasted peanuts to peanut noodles, but my  husband said they really added a nice crunch. The sauce on its own was a winner, too.

If you head over to IHCC this week, you'll find the other two variations, both of which look delicious.

Sweet and Spicy Peanut Soup

You can always count on an Ellie Krieger recipe to be healthy. In fact, her cookbooks have the nutritional breakdown of each recipe which is a bonus. This is especially helpful when I have spent the morning celebrating the Bar Mitzvah of a friend and the feast after the services was just too tempting. My husband insists that calories consumed on the Shabbat, the Sabbath, don't count. I'll hedge my bets on that one.

So, after a morning of indulging, I went easy in the evening. I made Sweet and Spicy Soup, also known as Nutty Sweet Potato Soup.  The recipe can be found in The Food You Crave (p. 77) or here.  It's a lovely, filling, but mildly flavored soup. Maybe the ginger I added was beyond it's freshest and fullest flavor. Next time, I'll use fresher ginger.

I don't always add garnishes to soups, but I would recommend adding the scallions at the end. They added a lovely crunch and piquancy that enhanced the soup. 

This week is I Heart Cooking Clubs' monthly pot luck. Which means, if you go here, you will find a treasure of different recipes and blogs.

Roast Vegetable Salad

Our featured chef this week at I Heart Cooking Clubs is Jamie Oliver, a famous chef, cookbook author and food activist. That said, this is the first time I have made one of his recipes.  I chose roast vegetable salad.  Ten years ago, I learned that roasting or grilling any vegetable was a sure way to cooking success.  So what could go wrong with a roast salad, especially one that features tomatoes, peppers, red onion and garlic?  The dressing itself is a delicious mix of paprika, lemon and capers and will work with any number of vegetable dishes.

The prep is really simple. You don't even have to peel the onions. Sprinkle with a little olive oil and sea salt. (Lucky me, a friend had just sent me a gift of sea salt) You place the tray of veggies in the oven and roast them until they are blackened.

Once the veggies are ready, all that's left to do is add the dressing. As it turns out, I had mixed success. This was not because the recipe is bad; it is really good. It was because I had a surplus of baby bell peppers at home and no regular sized ones. The baby peppers blackened rather too thoroughly as it turns out. Once I scraped away the blackened parts there were only seeds and stems left...well, maybe there was a nibble or two left out of all the peppers. The garlic cloves were also mostly hardened. Obviously, next time I will pay more attention keeping every ingredient a uniform size and add the garlic cloves later.

The other change that I made was not to add any additional olive oil to the dressing. That worked out fine as there was enough oil left over from the roasting. Despite, my faux pas I will be making this again. It was full of bright flavor and a snap to make. 

I found this recipe at jamieoliver.com. It is a very generous site loaded with tempting recipes. I liked his rating system; Super Easy, Not Too Tricky and Showing Off. The roasted salad was rated Not Too Tricky.  Actually, if you pay attention to how you cut the veggies, it is really quite easy.

There are quite a few delicious-looking Jamie Oliver recipes at IHCC. Why don't you check them out?

Maple Glazed Walnuts

"It's In Your Hands" is this week's theme at I Heart Cooking Clubs (IHCC).  Any food that doesn't require a fork, spoon, chopstick or other implement is fair game.  Because it's the last day of my winter break and our girls are home, I've decided to go really easy this week. 

Maple Glazed Walnuts require only 3 ingredients, easily found if not already in your cupboard. My only hesitation was pouring maple syrup into an unoiled skillet. I was afraid it might be impossible to wash off.  Turns out that frequent stirring while cooking and quickly soaking the pan once you're finished cooking makes for easy cleaning.

The recipe can be found in The Food You Crave by Ellie Krieger or here.  The walnuts are crunchy and sweet, but not too sweet. They are also addictive.

 To see other tasty hand-held treats look here.

Basic Cheese Quiche

It's December Potluck at I Heart Cooking Clubs. I've picked a quiche recipe and a flaky pie crust recipe from Mark Bittman's  How to Cook Everything. This is my basic "go to" book when I'm looking for a basic recipe. I love the instructions and explanations that make the recipes almost full proof.  There is still room for human error as I will explain.
 
The pie crust is made with the help of a food processor, but realizing that not everyone owns one, Bittman suggests alternative methods. In the past, I've used a pastry cutter or two knives to mix the flour and butter. Bittman describes a mixing method using your hands, "...cut cold butter into bits and rub it and the flour very quickly between your fingers, picking it up, rubbing it and dropping it."  He further explains the basic principal of making a flaky crust. Of the methods I've tried, using your hands is the most fun and this will probably be the method I use in the future.
 
For the filling, you have a choice of milk, cream or half & half. You also have your choice of cheeses. I added some  pre-cooked broccoli to the filling for added color and nutrition. Even though I used a deep dish 9" pie pan, I had too much filling. You would have thought that I would have respected the law of physics, but alas, I didn't want to waste a bit of the rich cheese filling. I soon realized my mistake as the filling spilled over the edge of the crust.

Oh well. I wiped up the mess. I still had a full quiche. It was delicious. My older daughter said it was the best quiche I had ever made and the only one she ever liked. (Gee, I always thought she like the dish. Who Knew?)

 You can find the recipes in How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman, page 743 and 686. I couldn't find a link to the recipe on-line, but this is a worthwhile book to own or borrow. Check out what other delicious dishes other cooks made for the December potluck at IHCC.  

Ricotta-Orange Pound Cake

A year and a half ago I bought Food & Wine magazine because the cover featured "Best Italian Dishes."  I didn't realize until I read the article that those dishes were recipes from Giada De Laurentiis' new Las Vegas restaurant.  The recipe that caught my eye, and the reason I've kept the magazine all this time was Ricotta-Orange Pound Cake.

I don't bake a lot and recently, everyone in our household has been trying to shed a few pounds. (Well, okay, by everyone, I mean my spouse and me. The kids are away at school and the dog will eat anything.)  All in all, I just couldn't justify baking a rich, delicious cake for no reason. Until this weekend. My birthday is Sunday. It's a major milestone and I've always been very happy to celebrate my birthday.

As if that wasn't reason enough, I Heart Cooking Clubs' featured chef this week is Giada De Laurentiis. And we were invited to a holiday potluck tonight. So all in all, this cake was meant to be.

The recipe is straightforward and simple. For me the most difficult steps were zesting the orange and finding a small bottle of Amaretto.

The cake is meant to be served with whipped cream, and Prosecco soaked strawberries.  I took the simpler route.  The orange and the ricotta are what attracted me to the recipe in the first place. Also, strawberries at this time of year are flown in from thousands of miles away and tend to be lacking in flavor.

The cake itself? It's delicious and moist. Despite only one teaspoon of orange zest,  the cake had an intense orange flavor. It was a big hit at the party. If I were to bake it during the summer, I would try it with the strawberries.

The recipe can be found here or in the May, 2014 issue of Food & Wine. Head over to IHCC to find out what other tasty dishes other cooks made.

Smoked Paprika Potato Chips

Its Nibbles and Noshes week at I Heart Cooking Clubs blog, featuring the recipes of Ellie Krieger.  For some time now, I've been interested in making potato chips at home. I love chips, but won't bring them into the house because frankly, I have no self-control. It really is a challenge to eat just one potato chip, or ten, or twenty.....

But if you make them at home, you don't have to make a whole lot of them. When you follow EK's recipe, you can bake them instead of frying them. This recipe features smoked paprika which is one of my favorite spices, so all in all, this was worth a try. 

An important part of the success of the recipe is a mandoline, so you can slice the potatoes 1/16 inch thick. It probably also helps to keep the slices fairly uniform as well. I don't own a mandoline and frankly during this, the giving season, I wasn't keen to spend any money on an implement I might use only once.  I decided to try my hand at slicing the potatoes with a knife. If I liked the recipe enough, I could always buy a mandoline later .... maybe during January sales.

Is the finished product worth buying a mandoline? I think so. Even when the potato slices were uneven and therefore some were crisp and some ... well, not so crisp, they were tasty. You can find the recipe at elliekrieger.com.  Also, for other great ideas for nibbles and noshes go to I Heart Cooking Clubs.

 

 



Two Side Dishes

Thanksgiving is approaching. I know which main dish I'm making and Thanksgiving is not Thanksgiving without my mother's dressing.  A friend is bringing the veggie main dish and homemade cranberry sauce. My husband will make pies (I hope, I hope.)  But we're still short a couple of side dishes.  Luckily,  I Heart Cooking Clubs  is featuring side dishes by our current chef, Ellie Krieger.

I have long wanted to try making oven baked onion rings. I love onion rings, but dread deep fat frying.  The recipe is from The Food You Crave or you can find it here.  It's quite easy to make. It's not the same as eating traditional onion rings, but it's a satisfying dish all the same.  I might add a little more salt and I wonder what it would be like if I used regular potato chips instead of baked potato chips.    

There is one other thing I will do differently next time.  Onion slices are dusted with flour, dipped into buttermilk and then covered with potato chip crumbs.  The crumbs got soggy after a few of the onion slices were dipped in them.  After that, it was hard to get the crumbs to adhere to the onion slices. Next time, I will divide the crumbs into smaller portions, so the crumbs stay drier.

I also made broccoli toasted with garlic, from the same book.  The recipe is available here as well.  Basically, you sauté the garlic, sauté the broccoli, pour the garlic on the broccoli and voila, a very tasty, healthy side dish. 

Visit IHCC to see what other wonderful sides people cooked up.

Herb-Roasted Turkey Breast

Food-wise, Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday.  When the kids were at home and we had Shabbat dinner every Friday, our menu often included turkey, dressing, green beans, cranberry sauce and Challah.

Any Way You Slice It is the theme for the week at I Heart Cooking Clubs (IHCC) so clearly that's a sign that I should make a turkey breast for dinner. There are only two of us at home these days, so a whole turkey would be too much. Sunny, our dog, might disagree. 

"Ahem," says the dog, eagerly waiting for turkey.

I made Herb-Roasted Turkey Breast from The Food You Crave. You can also find it here.   The dish is described as "a breeze to make and a real crowd pleaser." Agreed. You basically rub a mixture of olive oil and herbs onto a skinless turkey breast, put it in the oven and wait.

 

The biggest challenge for me was removing the skin.  I often remove the fattiest parts, but this was the first time I took off the whole skin and I was surprised by how much fat is under it all. I was worried that the turkey would come out quite dry. Instead, it came out flavorful and moist.  I should mention that I have a kosher kitchen and that the turkey breast comes pre-soaked and salted. From the kosher point of view, that is done to remove any trace of blood from the meat.  From a technique point of view, that may be known as brining the meat. This may account for some of the moistness.

 

 

I threw in some onions and potatoes to roast with the turkey and made cranberry sauce, as well. The recipe for the cranberry sauce is on the back of the Ocean Spray  package or here. . 



To see how many ways you slice oh so many kinds of delicious dishes check out IHCC .

Chicken Teriyaki

Every month, I Heart Cooking Clubs (IHCC) has a potluck. That means we get to choose any recipe we want from the collections of chefs that have been featured in the past six years.  That is not a small set of choices.  I went with chicken teriyaki from Nigella Kitchen.  I have owned the book for years, but haven't cooked from it very often. And in our household, anything teriyaki is a winner. It's a rare taste on which we can all agree.

What I like about Nigella Lawson's recipe is that it uses mirin (sweet rice wine) and soy sauce as a base with a little sake  and other ingredients thrown in. Some recipes I've tried have you start with bottled teriyaki sauce and mix in other ingredients.  I thought this recipe was cleaner and brighter. 

When I went to my favorite Asian market to purchase the sake and mirin,  I was surprised to fine a variety of sakes, at different price points and sizes. And frankly I had no idea how to choose.  It's different when I'm at a sushi restaurant and all I have to do is order small or large.

There was sake in elegant glass bottles, in jars with pop tops and even small aluminum cans (serve chilled!). I decided on a small bottle of mid-priced sake; the one with the  eye-catching red dragon on the label was the winner. 

 

The dish comes together quite easily, but leave enough time. There's a little chopping and marinating involved.  You can find the recipe on pages 38-40 of Nigella Kitchen (lots of pictures, not a lot of steps) or you can find it here.

To find out what other cooks came up with, look here.  It's worth it because there is quite a variety of yummy-looking dishes.

Savory Carrot-Cashew Soup

This week, I Heart Cooking Clubs (IHCC) is featuring recipes by Ellie Krieger that feature one or more orange hued ingredients. This shouldn't be difficult. Think butternut squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, papaya, oranges and other citrus fruit, persimmons, pumpkins, mangoes....you get the idea.

Perusing Ellie Krieger's website I came across this tasty recipe for carrot soup. Carrot soup is one of those dishes I've been meaning to make for years, but never did. Why? Who knows. Fortunately, I tried this recipe. It's tasty, filling and healthy.  Most importantly, my husband and I really liked it.  This recipe is a keeper. You can find it here: Carrot-Cashew Soup. 

 

To see what other members of IHCC came up with go here. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.