If I want to feed only two people, can I just divide everything by three, or do proportions need adjusting? (This is one of my big problems with recipes.)

(Also, isn't it "pancetta" with no h?)

I have recently learned with considerable pleasure how to make sweet potato gnocchi: Mash up a baked sweet potato. Gradually add flour until you have a workable dough; you may include a modest amount of salt, pepper and sage an it please you. Roll into snakes about the thickness of your finger. Slice the snakes into chunks.

Drop the gnocchi into boiling water and let them boil till they float, then about 30 secs. longer; fish them out of the water and saute them lightly in some butter. Serve with blanched kale (which you can blanch in the same pot of water after you fish the gnocchi out of it, while the gnocchi are in the pan with the butter). If you have more than you need, freeze the extra gnocchi by laying them on a cookie sheet; once frozen, put them in a sealable container and they won't stick together.

I'm told that if the dough doesn't come together well, you can add a thoroughly beaten egg and that will fix it; I have never had to resort to this. I use King Arthur whole wheat flour, but as far as I know white flour will work too.

This may sound like a fair amount of work, but (a) I tend to bake a few sweet potatoes while cooking something else at around the right temperature (400 degrees F), then mash them up and make gnocchi the next night; and (b) I usually make enough for 2 or 3 dinners, which for the two of us takes about three medium or two large sweet potatoes. The frozen gnocchi take only a few minutes to cook, so there's a quick "too tired to cook" dinner all lined up.

CREAMED SMOKED SALMON FOR DINNER

Put a pot of rice (white, brown, and/or wild) on to cook, or cook some whole wheat and/or white pasta, or bake and split some potatoes.

Melt 6 tablespoons butter in a medium saucepan. Mince 1 medium yellow onion and cook it in the butter. Throw in 2 smashed or minced cloves garlic, or 2 teaspoons garlic powder, and cook until fragrant. Now make a white sauce in the same pan using 2 cups milk or cream of whatever fat content you prefer and your thickener of choice; you can use whole wheat flour if you like. When the sauce has thickened, stir in 1/2 cup of that pale yellow cheese that comes in a shaker, preferably labeled "Romano." Stir in 10 oz. flaked shelf-stable smoked salmon, and make sure it's wild-caught, not that mushy-cardboard farmed stuff. You may also stir in up to 1 1/2 cups total cooked or canned vegetable(s) of choice, such as mushroom stems and pieces, broccoli florets, diced celery, etc. Ladle the warm sauce over the rice, pasta, or potatoes and serve with more vegetables or some fruit.

But damn, I have to watch the amount of salt and cream. Cheese is a seasoning now.

Bummed . . .

Porotos Granados

Ingredients
2 tablespoons canola or olive oil
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 teaspoon sweet smoked paprika
A handful of oregano or marjoram, chopped
3 1/2 ounces/100g small dried beans, such as pinto, navy, or cannellini beans, soaked overnight in cold water, or 1 (14-ounce/400g) can beans, drained and well rinsed
1 quart/liter vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
1 1/2 pounds/750g squash, such as butternut or red kuri, peeled, seeded, and cut into 3/4-inch/2cm chunks
7 ounces/200g green beans, trimmed and cut into 3/4-inch/2cm pieces
Kernels cut from 2 cobs of corn
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a large saucepan or casserole over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and sauté gently for about 10 minutes, until softened. Add the paprika and 1 tablespoon of the oregano. Cook for another minute.

If using dried beans, drain them after soaking and add to the pan with the stock and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for about 45 minutes, or until the beans are completely tender (dried beans vary, and sometimes this may take over an hour). Add the squash, stir well, and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, until the squash is just tender, then add the green beans and corn kernels and simmer for another 5 minutes.

If using canned beans, add the drained, rinsed beans, the squash, bay leaf, and stock at the same time, and simmer until the squash is just tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Then add the green beans and corn kernels and simmer for a further 5 minutes.

To finish, season well—I use about 1 teaspoon of salt and plenty of pepper. Stir in the remaining oregano, leave to settle for a couple of minutes, then serve.

Also works with baked butternut squash. Also works with roasted beets (the dough is the most amazing color).

Probably works with all sorts of root vegetables. Will have to try with parsnips. Parsnips are magic.

Oh, I will have to try it with bananas. Banana gnocchi with browned butter and brown sugar. Ding!

@Lila: What kind of sauces have you tried with the sweet potato gnocchi?

One thing I used to back in the day was make a basic white-sauce-with-a-lot-of-cheese (usually a mix of grated parmagiana and gruyère, with a little bit of very mature cheddar) and stir in big chunks of smoked salmon just before serving over pasta.

Then I decided that I didn't need to eat something that probably had a few thousand calories just looking at it, so I don't do it very often.

Start by heating a frying pan, with a knob of butter in it.

Continue by shredding potato. You want thin, long, strips, about 1 - 1.5 mm wide. Quickly stir in some black pepper (finely ground), a pinch of salt and egg. You need to be quick, so the liquid in the potato doesn't seep out. Put the mixture in the frying pan. Flatten it out until it's about 5 mm thick. Fry until the top side is dry, flip over and fry for about 1/3 of the time on the other side.

Serve immediately. If you want to be Really Traditional, it should be served with caviar, sour cream, and either (or both) of chives and/or chopped onion.

great: just what I need. Another must eat, delicious recipe involving double cream :)

I've also tried it with a bit of shaved parmesan. Both were equally good.

A general comment: One of the tricks of this recipe is getting it off the heat just as the arugula begins to wilt. In the dish as served, the arugula should look much more like salad leaves than like cooked spinach.

P J Evans, #5: Cacio e pepe done right is ambrosial. I pursued a minor Mission from God in Italy last month, ordering it in several different places. The best was at Osteria da Fortunata, a new-ish fresh-pasta place recommended to us by Ada Palmer. Just off the northwest corner of the Campo di' Fiori in Rome.

David Goldfarb, #3 -- Spelling of "pancetta" fixed. Thanks!

Unfortunately I am cooking for one, and trying to lose weight.

In the Village, in Greenwich Village, the yuppies eat tonight...
In the Village, in Greenwich Village, the yuppies eat tonight...

Ra-DEEEEE, dee dee dee dee, dee dee dichio!

If you like arugula and walnuts, you might also like Teresa's walnut and arugula pesto recipe, which she posted here a few years back.

(I'm now waiting for someone to turn up claiming that science fiction has been ruined ever since Tor took it upon itself to start promoting a pro-arugula and walnut agenda, and insisting that they are okay with vegetables in pasta sauce provided they're there for a reason.)

I mean, I don't normally engage in rhetorical questions, but can anyone point me to any categorical statements from people associated with Tor that they're against arugula?

Two of my favourite pizzas (made at home) involve arugula. One uses Teresa's arugula pesto in place of tomato; the other involves tomato, goats cheese and arugula. It can be tricky to avoid over-cooking the arugula, though.

My apologies to all and sundry.

Well sure. I mean chopped onions, carrots and celery go in without saying. If you're putting in something else, thats fine if the dish requires it, but don't do it just to make a culinary point.

I have used uncooked arugula (or rocket as I know it) on pizza with some success. I add the arugula after the pizza is removed from the oven; the heat from the pizza wilts it some but not enough to turn it into a soggy mess.

Since it's feminist message pasta, I assume it needs a pink sauce. Mmm, pink sauce.

The Daysies can eat the blue sauce. I'll send flowers to the funeral.

(Dammit, now I'm all hungry. Oh well, dinner's almost ready. Beans & rice with sausage, corn on the cob, and steamed kale, with fresh-picked strawberries for dessert.)

It was a basic stir fry, roughly as follows: 4 kinds of mushrooms were the driver (the last of my baby bellas from the supermarket, a shitake from the freezer, oyster mushrooms just bought at the farmer's market, and king mushrooms¹ bought at the Asian market), some baby bok choy (ditto), bamboo sprouts from a packet (ditto), fresh tofu (ditto), red peppers (what I could salvage from mold) carrots, onions, garlic. Also a cube or two of my frozen mirepoix, which itself included mushrooms and parsley as well as the usual trinity.

Sauce and spices included powdered ginger, epazote², paprika and turmeric, celery seeds (because I didn't have celery), soy sauce, Chinese black vinegar, mirin sauce³, rice vinegar (because the black vinegar was more sweet than tart), and for deglazing, some of the beer we'd been drinking (Trader Joe's "2013 Vintage Ale", not very summery but decent).

All this was over rice (reheated from the fridge) with a bit of quick-cooking egg noodles mixed in for texture. Besides the noodles, I added variety by adding different spices to the different rounds of frying stuff. It came out pretty well -- Matthew not only liked it, but asked for hints on how I did it (which was tough, because aside from the booty from the market trips that day, this was totally Mom-style "what would go well in this?"). I had the leftovers for lunch the next day.

¹ These look like a rod of stalk, perhaps an inch and a half thick with a minimal cap. For this dish, I quartered and chopped them; later experiments have revealed that crosswise slices (that is, coin-shaped) look and cook better.

² A Mexican spice that I've been experimenting with.

³ A sweet Japanese sauce, which gives teriaki sauce its classic sweet taste and heavy texture.

What funeral? The Daysies should eat the blue sauce, it might expand their minds! (There are not many things that would turn a sauce blue, and after my last post, you can imagine why I'd think of one in particular.)

This is the recipe that changed his mind.

SOUP FOR SOUP HATERS

Brown in a skillet in whatever cooking fat you have:

1 1/2 to 2 lbs. crosscut beef shank on clearance
1 tall can mushroom stems and pieces (unless fresh are on clearance--in that case saute 1 lb. chopped fresh mushroom caps and stems)
1 small yellow onion, minced

Put into a slow cooker. Combine in the skillet & bring to a boil, scraping up the browned bits from the pan:

6-8 cups household broth or stock, any kind except fish or seafood
1 lb. frozen peascorncarrots'n'limas, with or without green beans
2 tablespoons ketchup (no substitutions)
1/2 tsp. celery salt, or 1/2 tsp. salt + 1 or 2 chopped celery stalks
Tarragon, thyme, and garlic powder to taste

Pour the boiling broth mixture over the contents of the slow cooker, cover, and leave all day on Low. In the middle of the afternoon, add:

1/4 cup pearl barley

Serve with sturdy bread for soaking up the broth.

On arugula/rocket: I think we must have been living in the UK when arugula became a standard part of our diet, because we still call it rocket. This sometimes causes confusion, but not enough for us to make the effort to change.

I have the "blue == NOT FOOD" thing a lot stronger than most people. I won't even eat blue M&Ms. I certainly won't eat blue cheese, not if it has any visible blue bits. I can eat blueberries only if I pretend they're not actually blue ("They're called blueberries but they're actually indigo!"); if they're cooked to the point where they turn purple I'm fine (and actually I don't even like the flavor of the raw ones).

So when I think of "the blue sauce" I'm thinking of something no one should eat. Like with a toxic mold on it or something.

For an interesting dessert-type cheese, you can find Stilton with blueberries (red-violet).

50:50 mix of brown lentils and split peas
suitable chunk of smoked pig product (bacon bones, ham hock, ham bone..)

Per litre/quart of soup, add
15 whole black peppercorns
1 fresh bay leaf
4 cloves of cloves
1 teaspoon fish sauce
2 cloves of garlic
no onions (that's a different soup)

Bring to the boil, then simmer until it be enough.

One of the NZ independent creameries has started selling smoked butter. Spread on dense rye bread it's just perfect with this soup. Radishes on the side.

The latest green stuff I've had was from a Vietnamese grocery store, which had labeled it "bitter herd" (and my wife and I had been making jokes about goats recently, so that was another reason I had to get it.) Vietnamese name for it is Rau Dang. It looks sort of like a purslane, but has a pink flower instead of yellow, and there's some disagreement among the Vietnamese sources as to which Latin taxonomy name applies to it. Apparently the Vietnamese think it's really bitter, and mainly use it to flavor soups; it didn't seem that strong-flavored to me.

Xopher - Blue cheese, yum! (My wife hates the stuff even more than Parmesan, so I don't usually have it in the house unless she's out of town.)

Could the Passover Seder plate could be optimized by including a shank bone from an animal from a bitter herd? (I'd suggest that it could also be bred with an affliction, but that would probably make it not kosher.)

Hard chalky disks that taste like perfume. Entirely un-sweet.

People EAT that stuff? <wry>

(Makes me wonder what I consider a treat and others would be appalled by...)

>> West Indian butchers cut through bone ...

I experienced that in several chicken dishes east Africa. I surmised that they were disassembling the chicken with a cleaver rather than a sharp knife.

Cassy, #57: Someone at the Dr. Who con in Dallas had little packets of Jelly Babies, and I got one because I was curious. My conclusion was that they are almost but not quite completely unlike Gummi Bears, and not really to my taste.

That too, but it turns out that sour cream, caviar and onion is a really really tasty flavour mix (or, it is to me and quite a few people I know). I don't think salt-pickled cucumber has a place on that specific plate, though.

arugula = rocket = rampion = rapunzel

Have I missed this upthread?

It's fabulous when you can get it.

I'm prejudiced; I prefer what I grew up with. My recommendation is to try goat at a Caribbean (preferably Jamaican or Trinidadian) restaurant, as goat curry.

There's nowt so queer as folk

Pickled herring in cream sauce (invariably including onions) is pretty nummy too, and a lot less expensive.

And I'm another. Do you suppose the third is also here?

I actually go waaaaay beyond "don't like". Floral fragrances* aggravate my asthma to the point that I can't breathe.

*artificial or real. A coworker's gardenia flowers almost shut down my respiratory system.

Oddly for me, because I'll try practically anything, I've never had curry. I've been afraid of it because I don't like hot foods. Is there a such a thing as a mild curry? I'm ok with horseradish-hot, but capsacin-hot even in small quantities I Do Not Like.

Yes, there are mild curries. There can also be incredibly strong curries that don't have a hint of heat. Most curries get their "curry" flavor from a blend of Indian spices, and it's easy to just not use hot spices in the mix.

Whether you can get mild curry dishes at a restaurant near you is a different question, but I've rarely had a problem.

Growing up, one of the common dishes my father would make is saag, a curry made mostly of fresh spinach, oils, and spices -- sort of like creamed spinach with a different flavor. I just found a recipe on line which calls for spinach, mustard greens, cumin, turmeric, garlic, butter, and 1 chili pepper. I wouldn't add the pepper myself.

My most-preferred notes for fragrances are foodie scents, amber, and wood scents, in roughly that order.

Cassy, #75: Penzey's sells a variety of curries, both mild and hot, and also has suggestions for how to ease into using them.

Some restaurants also offer mild curries; this will usually be noted on the menu. If you're ever in Nashville, I strongly recommend the apple-curry sauce at Calypso Cafe, which is very mild and sweet.

As Buddha Buck notes, there are both mild curries and heavily-spiced-but-not-hot curries. (I often substitute half-sharp paprika for cayenne in Indian recipes to make the second.)

I would not put curry goat in a reasonably-authentic restaurant on either list; it is generally a fairly hot curry. (For the Jamaican version, the typical pepper is scotch bonnet--the flavor is awesome, but those are HOT.)

I have plans to get some of that some time when I can afford to splurge, because I came across an early-20th-century cocktail called the Aviation that calls for it, and the recipe intrigued me. It also made me realize that there was a pre-Prohibition cocktail era that tended to use liqueurs that are now hard to come by. I'd always thought of cocktails as initially having been a *result* of Prohibition (i.e. -- "what can we mix with this bootleg hooch to make it taste less awful?")

Yes, you can make your own curry blend from a well stocked spice cupboard. This is one of my favorites. Shwarma: 1 tbsp ground cumin, 1 tbsp ground coriander, 1 tbsp garlic powder, 1/2 tbsp paprika, 1 tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp ground cloves, 1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper, 1 tsp ground black pepper, 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon. You can leave the cayenne out if you want, but it does add flavor as well as capsacin style heat. I don't notice the burn at all because it's essentially 1/26th of the blend.

Another one you can try off the shelf is Garam Masala, it's mild, too. Ditto for golden curries and every green curry I've tried to date. Here's a quick pseudo-curry you can make.

Quick Chicken Curry

1 tablespoon oil
1/4 cup diced onion
1/2 cup frozen sliced carrots (you can use fresh, but it adds to the cooking time)
1/2 cup broccoli florets OR cauliflower florets
(pretty much any crunchy veggie will do as long as it stands up to simmering without turning into mush. )
1 boneless chicken breast diced into 1 inch cubes (about 2 cups)
1 tablespoon of the shwarma OR Garam Masala mix.
1 small can of coconut milk OR 4 oz of cream cheese melted in 2 cups of chicken stock.

Coat the chicken in the spice mix, set aside. Heat the oil and add the onion. Saute until translucent. Add the chicken to the pan and brown. Add the remaining ingredients and mix until the spice mix transfers to the veggies. Add the liquid and simmer until a thick sauce forms.

I'm very partial to saag aloo (spinach and potato curry). Basically you

1.) Wilt and purée a bunch of spinach

2.) Cube some potatoes, and boil lightly

3.) Fry onions with garlic, turmeric, cumin and other fragrant spices of your choice (turmeric is good, ginger can be good for a bit of heat, garam masala can be very good)

4) Add potatoes, fry until coated with spice mix

5) Stir in spinach.

Eat - maybe with a flatbread. Even better warmed up the next day.

You might also want to look into kormas - they're typically very mild, and cooked with coconut milk and ground almonds (at least in the UK - given the way that recipes transmogrify when they travel, they might have started off as something very different at some point.)

Mixed drinks have probably existed as long as people have had more than one to mix*. Queen Victoria is supposed to have enjoyed a dram of scotch whisky in her claret. In the 18th century there was a popular drink called three threads which was a mix of ale, beer and stonger beer; supposedly porter was brewed to be like this three threads. Still, I think it's fair to say that prohibition helped to popularise the cocktail, especially as a drink which seeks to disguise the flavour of the alcohol.

* Or more likely came into existence after they had two or three drinks unmixed and then came up with the plan of mixing them.

So you're saying porter is a triple thread?

Anyone else recall the commercial - Grape Nuts maybe? - wherein Euell Gibbons informed us that "Many parts of a pine tree are edible"?

A couple of weeks ago I made a nice green Thai-style curry out of a lot of shallots, garlic, ginger, chili peppers, and a big bunch of cilantro. Puree, throw in with a can of coconut milk, boil, add potatoes or whatever. Add a lot of chopped basil when it's almost done.

And if you want a high-flavor non-spicy curry, I expect the chili peppers could be omitted.

(If you're cilantro-negative, I'm not sure where to go with it.)

If you have a nearby IKEA, there's some pretty decent (although not sturgeon) caviar in the Swedish Store. Seems it's labelled "Herring Roe" and vends at USD 1.99 (+ tax I guess).

I actually prefer it to the Russian stuff, but on the other hand it is what I grew up with.

But the pickled herring is pretty good stuff, too. It's just atht I can't eat huge quantities of it before going "I have had my fill for now, thanks".

I've been known to take young segments of needle+branch off of spruces and chew on them while hiking in Swedish forests. Tastes OK-ish, weird mouth feel though. The old needles are too tough to chew and have less flavour.

Pine and spruce resin can also be used as ersatz chewing gum when out and about. But, again, unless you have a real need for a chewing gum and find yourself unable to get back to civilization before your craving must be fulfilled, it's probably better to just carry a spare pack of gum.

The things survival training teach you, eh.

I've had non-alcoholic birch beer; it's a lot like sarsparilla and root beer. The Sioux City soda company makes it; I don't know if they do a spruce beer or not, although that sounds like something the Jones Soda people could look into, given some of their other flavors.

I have a meringue cookie recipe (I think from Garden and Gun, although I won't swear to that) which has pine needles ground up with the sugar.

Bark bread at Wikipedia; many of the sources are Scandinavian.

Wang Choy Chow Sau (Braised Pork Belly)

SERVES 6

INGREDIENTS
1 (3-lb.) piece boneless, skin-on pork belly
2 tbsp. peanut oil
1 small yellow onion, minced
1 (2") piece ginger, peeled and minced
2 tsp. ground cloves
1½ tsp. ground cumin
1½ tsp. ground fennel
5 whole star anise
4 bay leaves
3 sticks cinnamon
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup light soy sauce
3 tbsp. dark soy sauce
⅓ cup sugar
Kosher salt, to taste
4 cups baby spinach
Tender sprigs cilantro, julienned carrot, red bell pepper, and scallion, for garnish (optional)
Cooked white rice, for serving

Bring an 8-qt. saucepan of water to a boil; cook pork belly 5 minutes, then drain and cut in half crosswise. Add oil to pan; heat over medium-high heat. Cook onion and ginger until soft, 3–4 minutes. Add cloves, cumin, fennel, star anise, bay leaves, and cinnamon; cook until fragrant, 1–2 minutes. Add reserved pork, the stock, soy sauces, and sugar; boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; cook, covered, until pork is very tender when pierced with a knife, about 1½ hours. Transfer pork to a serving platter; keep warm. Simmer sauce, stirring occasionally, until reduced by half and thickened, 18–20 minutes; spoon sauce over pork.

Bring a 4-qt. saucepan of salted water to a boil. Cook spinach until wilted, 1–2 minutes, then drain and squeeze dry; arrange around pork. Garnish with cilantro, carrot, pepper, and scallion if you like; serve with rice on the side.

Cassie @ 75 I make more mild curries than my partner is happy with - he keeps adding red pepper flakes.

I dislike alcohol, so for me a wine sauce has to be cooked for quite a while before serving (to cut down on the bitterness). My husband simply dashes a little extra wine into his portion, and we're both happy....

THE QUINTESSENTIAL CASSEROLE

You will need 4 to 5 cups leftover starchy food, such as plain rice (brown, white, wild), small pasta shapes (shells, macaroni, wheels), or diced boiled or baked potato with or without skin. Feel free to use more than one type. You will also need 3/4 cup shaker cheese, 6 oz. grated melty cheese, 2 cups bechamel (easy on the salt) or a low-sodium condensed cream soup diluted to that volume, a little butter or oil, and optionally up to 1 1/2 cups diced leftover meat and/or vegetables.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Use the butter or oil to grease a 9x9 casserole; set aside. Also set aside a little of the bechamel and mix just over half of your shaker cheese into the rest of it.

Now decide how you are going to layer your ingredients. Here are some examples:

*Mix cheesy bechamel with 3 cups rice and some diced turkey, put into casserole, spread 2 cups parboiled diced potatoes on top, spread with reserved bechamel, cover with melty cheese, and top with remaining shaker cheese.

*Mix cheesy bechamel with 5 cups rice and some diced leftover broccoli, put half in casserole, put melty cheese on top, cover with remaining rice, spread with plain bechamel, and cover with remaining shaker cheese.

*Stir cheesy bechamel into 5 cups leftover pasta, put half in casserole, put 1 1/2 cups cubed ham on top, cover with remaining pasta, then spread with plain bechamel and top with remaining cheeses.

Whatever you decide to do, always put plain bechamel on top so that you don't get a dry and crusty top layer of starch ingredient.

Bake at least 15 minutes, until bubbly and browned to taste. Let rest 5 minutes and serve.

Silly question, but where should I be looking for pork belly?

Agreed, cheese on top, but then add butter dots and then bread crumbs for that umami crunchy effect. (Probably what the fried onion rings do in That Casserole Dish.)

I cannot read that post without thinking of this one; one of my many favorite Making Light posts.

Speaking of crumbs, this casserole can be made entirely with whole grains, even the bechamel.

praisegod barebones@86: On korma: a few years back I got a detailed description of a classic korma (details unfortunately now forgotten, other than featuring black pepper and some dry cooking of spices) from a coworker of Pakistani descent, together with a comment/complaint that "korma" had become one of those dishes that any Indian restaurant in London basically had to offer, and that what had to be offered was a very creamy dish with little similarity to the classic. About two days later friends in London took me to their favorite Indian restaurant (which, unfortunately, I've now also forgotten) and I saw that it had two different kormas on the menu: one matched the "pint of cream" version every restaurant has, and the other matched my coworkers description, thus addressing both audiences. (Under the circumstances, I had to try the latter, which was delicious.)

I'll check the local Store of Fancy Resort and report back after Tuesday. Thing is, I keep spending so much time trying to find the right bacon that I think I would have noticed something like pork belly right next to it. (And can't ever remember seeing it at their butcher section.)

Fiesta occurred to me right as I was reading #118! The I-35 one is about a mile away. My only concern with them is that if I were to find such at Central Market, I'd be a little happier about probable organic content. IYSWIM.

PRETTY GOOD TURKEY CHILI

(This recipe fills a 5-quart slow cooker and freezes well. Reduce if necessary.)

Soak 1 pound dry white beans. Dice the easily removed dark meat from 1 after-dinner roast turkey weighing no more than 12 pounds; set aside.

Drain and rinse the soaked beans in the morning; put into your slow cooker, add water to cover 1 knuckle deep, and set on High.

Later that day, chop enough onions and/or sweet peppers to thickly cover the bottom of a 10-inch skillet; saute in olive oil until no longer crisp, mince 2 cloves garlic or measure 2 teaspoons powder, throw in the garlic along with 2 tablespoons green taco sauce of choice and 1 tablespoon cumin, and stir until fragrant. Ladle bean broth out of the cooker into the skillet, bring to a boil, and pour back into the slow cooker. Add the diced turkey. Turn to Low and leave until dinnertime; adjust the salt and heat and serve with plain yogurt or sour cream and some freshly made cornbread.

Variations: Wait until the beans are tender to add the sauteed vegetables and seasonings. First ladle out as much bean broth as you can and discard it or reserve for another use; then dump the skillet into the nearly-dry beans. Serve over rice or with scoop-shaped corn chips. Or, follow the original recipe, take out some beans, mash, and return to the chili.

My cow-devouring husband thinks this is pretty good.

I find that most curries, like most chilies, work fine and are greatly appetizing if I place a small-enough portion of them on a large-enough bowl of rice. (For the chili, it can (for my taste) best be mixed into a large bowl of several kinds of beans.)

OTOH, as a Certified Old Geezer... I moved to Covina c. 1955, when there were a few grandfathered-in Hispanic families and the one Black one (he washed cars for the Clippinger Chevrolet agency), and one Chinese restaurant (there had been two in Toledo). Possibly also two Italian places, one of which made pizza, but I don't think there were any "Mexican" restaurants, and certainly no "Soul-Food" ones. Now... Wow! There are at least a dozen sushi-ya in the neighborhood, which I find rather astonishing because there used to be one in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo, and two out in Gardena.  Period. 

Okay, I still think the world, & America, are going to Hell in a handbasket, but in some respects things are enormously better than they used to be. Yeah, I still have to drive into L.A. for Ethiopean, or Minority-Ethnic Indian ("Balti", and "Paki", common in the U.K., are rare here, and Balti, expecially, has mild curries that I can enjoy enormously). My impression is that "garam masala" means something like "mixed spices" and I think Rob Hansen (of all the people I know) would be a pretty good Guru in this area.

The ones I've tried so far have been not-too-hot (I generally pick ones that mention "Northern India', on the theory that the farther south you get, the hotter)

That hasn't generally been my experience. I think of the most characteristic South Indian dishes, at least that you'll find at South Indian restaurants in the US, as being quite mild - things like dosas or idli. (There's a great South Indian place in Artesia called Woodlands - they do have some North Indian standards on the menu as well but they aren't as good.) I have the impression it's mostly Tamil, but I'm not sure of that.

There's actually a lot of overlap in Pakistani food vs Indian food, not surprisingly, and since Punjabi food (a strong area of overlap) tends to be very common in US Indian restaurants, in my experience the use of beef is the main way to distinguish whether the restaurant is being run by Muslims or Hindus, to the extent that that maps to Pakistani vs. Indian.

Even so, some food is too hot for us; I've had Burmese dishes that were over the top Scoville-wise. Still, we buy a lot of hot peppers and hot sauces. I order both Melinda's XXXXTra Hot Habanero Sauce and Marie Sharp's Hot Habanero sauce by the 12-bottle case, and a case lasts well under a year.

Even black pepper gets a lot of use, because our favorite grilled chicken has a marinade of 1/3 cup lemon juice, 1/3 cup olive oil, and 2 tablespoons of coarsely pounded black pepper (Penzey's Whole Special Extra Bold Indian Black Peppercorns, which we buy by the pound). The recipe is from Marcella Hazan. We had half a grilled chicken left over from Sunday and had it with the asparagus salad.

If that is the case, may I say that you have my profound condolences. It is true that it has to be treated with care, but for unctuous spicy dishes cooked very slowly, often with yoghurt and lemon, there is nothing like it. While the saddle or leg, if lean and properly hung, makes a glorious roast. Don't forget the redcurrant jelly!

On the other hand, much of the lamb you do see is not in fact young lamb, but can be as much as a year old, and so is really more like teenaged mutton--not as strongly flavored as older mutton, but a bigger animal than my grandparents would have associated with the term "lamb".

*Barbecue is used here in the narrow technical sense of meat cooked slowly over hardwood coals (or charcoal, every so often, in a pinch) and not in the sense of "food cooked outdoors on the grill", which is heresy, but I can't stop you from saying and writing it.

I'm quite fond of lamb, but it's so expensive at the grocery store that I hardly ever bother. But that barbecued mutton? My god. Worth the trip, and then some.

This week has, so far, been an adventure in public speaking and travelling in Sweden (Uppsala Monday, Stockholm yesterday, Linköping later today, Lund on Thursday and Gothenburg on Friday) but nothing truly exciting, foodwise. I guess the Fish Wallenberg Monday was curious and quite edible, but I know not what went into making it.

Lamb shoulder chops are not grossly expensive; I cut one up and made an amazing stir-fry from that, an eggplant, an onion, some olive oil and two years ago's home-grown marjoram last week. They're also got for hot pot in the winter: cook with potatoes and onions and then make a gravy before serving (use kneaded butter and a bit of beef broth).

Elgin? Taylor? Somebody else?

I think I'd better counter with Alfredo sauce. Cream plus egg plus ... And at least one tomato-based sauce with cream.

It occurs to me that I probably should check a couple of high-end butchers/charcutiers in town, as it's definitely an item in a couple of upscale places we like (Fino, Salty Sow), and as I regard Fiesta as a last resort for reasons expressed earlier.

Background: My grandmother ran an Italian restaurant. She and her mother-in-law were wonderful cooks. They could make gnocchi and ravioli and meat sauces and chicken cattchatori (sp) that were to die for.

My mother and aunts of course learned how to cook from them.

There was one dish from this tradition that I really didn't care for: Pasta con pesto. This was pasta with a sauce of pesto and (BARE WITH ME OK?) what seemed like an entire bar of cream cheese. A thick, unpleasantly rich plaster that made it hard to eat. "Put butter on it!" was the reply if anyone complained that it was hard to get on a fork. This was before microwaves, so this meant trying to work hard better into the cooling mass of green sludge your spaghetti was embedded in.

Fast forward through decades of eating this stuff. I'm reading a book by Brian Herbert which contains a description of pasta con pesto! The "sauce" in this version was pesto, grated cheese, olive oil and pine nuts.

I report this to the family, and am attacked as disloyal and a troublemaker ("WHAT WOULD HE KNOW?").

Years later, people in the extended family begin trying this new "lighter" version of pasta con pesto they'd heard about. "It's how they eat it in Italy! Just grated cheese and olive oil!"

Imagine that.

No one remembers me having described this variation, much less apologizes.

That's maybe not the best counterexample you could have chosen. The original fettuccine Alfredo recipe does not involve cream (and I've never heard of one including egg - are you maybe thinking of carbonara?), just butter and parmesan. (See this Saveur article.) That's not to say there aren't authentic Italian pasta dishes that include cream (I found a couple flipping through my copy of Marcella Hazan, one involving peas and prosciutto, the other asparagus), nor that fettuccine Alfredo is by any stretch of the imagination healthy, just that the original version doesn't include cream.

My opinion on lamb prices is somewhat weighted by 1) growing up in a country with different food prices, and 2) having "how much do I spend on food" be the only place where I could effectively economize for several years. So I side-eye any meat that costs more than $3.50 a pound.