Apple pie and fruit salads

I've been in the kitchen but have misplaced my camera charger so I don't have proof. Right now, I am waiting for my apple-vanilla pie to finish. The apartment smells like buttered toast, cinnamon, and vanilla. I used Mark Bittman's crust. The recipe is available here. I'm also taking part in Lin's Summer Salad Challenge. I've prepared three salads so far: two fruit and one vegetable.

French onion soup with homemade vegetable stock

All the veggie odds and ends I saved for a year or so finally made it into a vegetable stock in June. And the vegetable stock was the base for a french onion soup. The stock was composed of carrots, celery, scallions, garlic, onions, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and salt and pepper (to taste).

The finished stock was portioned into 4-oz ramekins then each was topped with a slice of toast and a slice of cheese. These were then broiled until the cheese melted and served almost immediately. The verdict: quite tasty, but would use a firmer bread next time (e.g.: a baguette).

I made this!

No recipes today. But I wanted to show off some of the mugs I made at pottery class. As you can tell, I am quite proud of them :) Many hours (weeks, in fact) went into making each one of them, and you never know how they will look like until they come out from the kiln. It is so nice to be able to have them in the kitchen. It is extremely gratifying to sip coffee from a mug you made yourself. I have also made bowls, but I have to say, I love making mugs. I am planning to make more so that I can give one to everyone in my family. I just signed up for more hours at the pottery studio. Last week, I gave one to my mom and one to my sister, which they both seem to appreciate. I will post pictures of my bowls next when I use them to serve my cooking.

Dakshin dinner

I made a Dakshin (South Asian) inspired dinner a few months back and have been meaning to post the pictures. Here it is. An all vegetarian fare. All the recipes were from my favorite vegetarian Indian cookbook entitled: Dakshin Vegetarian Cuisine from the South India by Chandra Padmanabhan. Upik had recommended this book to me and I absolutely love it. The recipes are well-explained and there are wonderful pictures to inspire you in this book.

Here I made: Stuffed Eggplant Poriyal (pg. 38), Mashed Green Gram Dal (pg. 14) and cucumber raita and Bean Poriyal (pg 32, not in the picture above, forgot to serve it until halfway through dinner!). And I also made some chapatti to go with the dishes. Also to accompany the dishes a medley of pickles--manggo, chillie and lime.

The eggplant (Ennai Kathirikkai), I have to say, was the star of the show. Stuffed with grated coconut, chillies, tamarind, and dal, it was absolutely delicious, even if I have to say so myself.
If you like eggplants, I would highly recommend this dish. Lovely!

Migas

Hola! The dish above is called Migas--it is a Tex-Mex dish that is great for breakfast or brunch. I have little experience with Tex-Mex cuisine but I saw Rachael Ray make this one day in her show and it looked really yummy (anything with avocado seems yummy to me!). The next day I saw that I had the approximate ingredients in the fridge and decided to give it a go. I say approximate because I liberally substituted many of the ingredients, like pita bread for corn tortilla and brown lentils for refried beans. I also did not look up the recipe, just relying on memory, so it is Tex-Mex reintepreted.

Here is Rachael Ray's recipe. http://www.rachaelrayshow.com/food/recipes/mighty-migas/

My version is vegetarian, it has onions, garlic, cut up pita bread, cooked brown lentils, cherry tomatoes, fresh red chillies, cheddar cheese, avocado and eggs, and I topped it with some indian yogurt. As Rachael Ray would say: "Delish!"

Rainy season is fruit season in Bangladesh!

So, we had this major storm the other day. Really dramatic and beautiful -- from the warmth of being indoors, that is. I would not have wanted to be stuck outside in that for long. I went out for a quick soak in the beginning -- it had been really hot before -- but I came back in as soon as I started to see hailstones. The neighborhood kids had a field day though, running out as soon as the rain started to subside to pick up all the fallen fruit. Pranto, my neighbour's son, was disappointed because all the older kids beat him to the ripe fruit, while he got stuck with the sour green mangoes! The rain started up again in a few hours, though, and went on all night. I had frogs swimming by my windows!

The day after, I opened up all my doors and windows and found this outside my step:

Well, not really. Actually it was this enormous whole jackfruit brought down by the wind. Gremlins ate my photos -- I just cannot find them -- but the way it was sitting, all cute and innocent, it looked just as if someone had put it there. So I left it for a little while, asked around, realized nobody had been picking jackfruit by my cottage that day, and as soon as I realized it was literally a windfall, I swooped in to claim it.

I'll post the jackfruit saga later, but we also had a ton of fallen mangoes to deal with, and the air was so fresh and light after the storm. So I sat outside with my neighbours and saw what they've been up to lately:

Peeling windfall mangoes with a boti -- a curved blade used in Bangladesh -- I know they use something similar somewhere in Polynesia, but I think it's an import there. Is this just a south asian thing?

Dried shredded green mango

Shredded onions, to be dried, mixed with the dried mango, bottled with plenty of mustard oil and stored in the sun. Makes a pungent pickle!

Homemade mango leather!! Even better than my grandma's... and prettier! The patterning is from the woven basket the fruit leather is dried on.

I decided to pitch in and make a mango salad. Adapted from something my friend D's mother makes round this time of year. Heaven on a plate.

Half-ripe mango: you want you want it tart and only a little sweet, neither hard and green, nor fully ripened.

Shredded chillies and lime leaf -- and no, I
did not use the boti for this. I'm too chicken
to use one!

add a little salt, a bit of sugar,
and just a tablespoon of milk

mix em up with clean hands,

mushing the mango a little.

ask Pranto if he wants more sugar

wash your hands, gather round, dig in!

Sunday dinner on the grill

It is said that a picture speaks a thousand words. In this case the words are synonymous with delicious!

Sardines stuffed with bruised mint, from the garden

The fish after grilling:

The final product:

And again,